Dr. Gintaras (Rex) Reklaitis elected as AAAS Fellow

Dr. Gintaras (Rex) Reklaitis, the Burton and Kathryn Gedge Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering, is one of three College of Engineering faculty elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS fellow is a lifetime honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. This year, 489 members have been awarded this distinction and was formally announced Nov. 27 in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science.

For leading contributions to process systems engineering, including batch processing, supply chain and enterprise-wide optimization and pharmaceutical manufacturing, and for achievements in education and service.

Dr. Gintaras Reklaitis, the Burton and Kathryn Gedge Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering, has been elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS fellow is a lifetime honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. This year, 489 members have been awarded this distinction.

Professor Reklaitis joined Purdue Chemical Engineering in 1970. His research involves the application of computing and information and systems technology to support the complex decisions inherent to the design and operation of processing systems. Recent areas of emphasis include investigation of approaches to support batch and semi-continuous operations as well as methodology for plant- and enterprise-wide planning and optimization with applications in the pharmaceutical industry and in integrated energy systems.
 
Reklaitis was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering  in 2007 and has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Pharmaceutical Innovation since 2006. He served as editor-in-chief  (1986-2008) and won the Best Paper of 2006, both with Computers & Chemical Engineering.
 
In addition to AAAS, he is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE), American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE – director 1997-1999), American Chemical Society (ACS), American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and Institute for Operations Research and the Management Science (INFORMS).
 
He is the recipient of several awards, including the John M. Prausnitz AIChE Institute Lecturer Award and the AIChE Warren K. Lewis Award for Chemical Engineering Education, both in 2017. In addition, he was named the winner of the Council for Chemical Research Pruitt Award in 2015 and the European Federation of Chemical Engineering Long Term Achievement Award in Computer Aided Process Engineering in 2013.
 
He earned his BS with highest distinction in chemical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1965, and his MS and PhD in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 1969.
 
Learn more about Professor Gintaras Reklaitis at https://engineering.purdue.edu/ChE/people/ptProfile?resource_id=11228.