News

August 2005

• Professor Kothare was recently invited to deliver a talk entitled "Efficient Scheduled Stabilizing Model Predictive Control for Nonlinear Systems" at the "International Workshop on Assessment and Future Directions of Nonlinear Model Predictive Control" which was held during the days of August 26-30, 2005 in Freudenstadt, Germany.  The goal of this international workshop was to bring together a diverse group of internationally recognized researchers and industrial practitioners in the area of nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) and moving horizon state estimation (MHE), to critically assess and discuss the current status as well as future directions and needs of research.  5 plenary lectures, 12 invited lectures (including the one given by M.V. Kothare), 18 regular contributed papers and 25 contributed posters were presented at this workshop which had a total of 85 attendees from around the world.

April 2005

• Leonidas Bleris, a graduate student working under the supervision of Prof. Kothare, has been selected as a participant of the Pan American Study Institute (PASI) on Process Systems Engineering that will take place on August 16-25, 2005, at Iguazu Falls, Argentina.  The PASI workshop aims at advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and young researchers in the area of Process Systems Engineering.  Funding for PASI is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE), and includes accommodation and travel expenses.  The organizers of the workshops are Ignacio Grossmann, Carnegie Mellon University, Jaime Cerda, INTEC Argentina, and Jose Pinto, Polytechnic University and University of Sao Paul.

          More information can be found at:

          http://cepac.cheme.cmu.edu/pasi.htm

March 2005

• Prof. Kothare gave two plenary talks in March at the 24th annual Benelux (Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg) national meeting on Systems and Control.  The meeting was held in Houffalize, Belgium.  Kothare's lectures were titled "Synthesis of Controllers for Constrained Systems" and "Dynamics and Control of Microchemical Systems."  There were a total of 160 attendees from the three key host Benelux countries as well as from France and Canada.  In addition to the plenaries, there were three days of technical sessions of regular contributed papers.

          More information can be found at:

          http://saas.ulb.ac.be/benelux2005/

January 2005

• Matthew Medgaarden, a new graduate student, joined the group of Prof. Kothare to pursue a Ph.D. Matt comes to Lehigh and the Center from Oklahoma.

• Leonidas Bleris, a graduate student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, working under the supervision of Prof. Kothare, has been selected as recipient of the National Academies' Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program.  This Fellowship is sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and its constituent organizations, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council (the National Academies).  Bleris will spend ten weeks as a policy fellow in Washington, D.C., with the Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their Applications in the Division of Engineering and Physical Sciences.  This Fellowship program of the National Academies is designed to engage graduate students in the analysis that informs the creation of science and technology policy, and to familiarize them with the interactions of science, technology,and government.  As a result, students develop essential skills different from those attained in academia and make the transition from being a graduate student to a professional.

The program is very competitive with generally less than 10% of applicants being selected in any given year.

More information on this program can be found at the following web site:

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/policyfellows/index.html

December 2004

• Graduate student Khaled Alfadhel successfully defended his dissertation entitled "Mathematical Modeling of Microchemical Systems" under the supervision of Prof. Kothare.  Khaled, who was supported  by the Embassy of the Government of Kuwait, will now return to Kuwait as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Kuwait University.

• At the Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers held in Austin, TX, graduate students from the Center presented the following talks:

1. Bleris, L. (speaker) and M.V. Kothare.  Efficient empirical modeling of distributed parameter systems.  Presented at the 2004 AIChE Meeting Abstracts, Austin, TX, November (2004).
2. Bleris, L. (speaker), J. Garcia, M. Arnold and M.V. Kothare, Embedding Model Predictive Control in Microchemical Systems.  Presented at the 2004 AIChE Meeting Abstracts, Austin, TX, November (2004).
3. Pattekar, A.V. (speaker) and M.V. Kothare.  A high-throughput radial packed-bed micro fuel processor for portable power applications.  Presented at the 2004 AIChE Meeting Abstracts, Austin, TX, November (2004).
4. Alfadhel, K.A. (speaker) and M.V. Kothare.  The Energy Equation in Microchemical Systems.  Presented at the 2004 AIChE Meeting Abstracts, Austin, TX, November (2004).

• Also, Prof. Kothare chaired the session entitled "Advances in Process Control" at this Annual Meeting of the AIChE.

October 2004

• At the Optics East conference in Philadelphia organized by the International Society of Optical Engineering (SPIE), Prof. Kothare was invited to give a talk in the session "Fluidic Devices and Fuel Cell Applications".  The talk was entitled "Microreactors for efficient on-chip fuel processing and hydrogen generation".

July 2004

• Ashish Pattekar, a graduate student working under the supervision of Prof. Kothare, successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Integrated Microchemical Systems for Fuel Processing in Micro Fuel Cell Applications".  Ashish will join Nu Element Inc. in Tacoma, WA, as Director of Micropower, beginning in August.

• At the 2004 American Control Conference in Boston, MA, graduate student Leonidas Bleris presented a paper entitled "Reduced Order Control in Microchemical Systems" that was co-authored with his advisor Prof. Kothare. Bleris received the "Best presentation in the session" award for his presentation.
  
  At this conference, Prof. Kothare co-chaired as session entitled "Linear Model Predictive Control - III" and also co-authored a paper entitled "Two Level Model Predictive Control for the Maximum control Invariant Set" with P. Grieder, Z. Wan and M. Morari.


• At the 7th IFAC Conference on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS-7) in Boston, MA, graduate student Leonidas Bleris presented a paper entitled "Embedded Model Predictive Control for System-on-Chip Applications", co-authored with his advisor Prof. Kothare and collaborators, Prof. Mark Arnold (Comp. Sci., Lehigh U.) and Jesus Garcia, graduate student in Computer Science, Lehigh. At this conference, Professor Kothare was chair of a keynote session.
  
• Graduate student Ashish Pattekar successfully defended his thesis entitled "Integrated Microchemical Systems for Fuel Processin in Micro-Fuel Cell Applications" under the supervision of Prof. Kothare. The thesis defense seminar took place on July 8.
  
  

June 2004

• Professor Kothare has been appointed the R. L. McCann Associate
  Professor of Chemical Engineering at Lehigh University as of July 2004. This is a seven year endowed professorship that was made possible by Lehigh alum R. L. McCann. The previous McCann professor was former Chemical Engineering faculty member Professor William E. Schiesser.

May 2004

• Professor Kothare, co-Director of the Center, has been named "Class of 1961 Associate Professor, Lehigh University" which is awarded to "a recently tenured Associate Professor for distinction in teaching, research and service".
  
  

April 2004

• At the annual faculty and staff dinner on April 13, 2004, graduate student Khaled Al-Fadhel  received the Lehigh University outstanding Teaching Assistant award for demonstrating excellence as a teaching assistant for the course "Introduction to Process Control  and Simulation" in Spring 2003. Khaled is a graduate student working under the supervision of Professor Kothare in the Center.

January 2004

• Professor Kothare, co-Director of the Center, was invited to deliver a semi-plenary lecture at the 7th International Symposium on Advanced Control of Chemical Processes (ADCHEM) which was held in Hong Kong from 11-14 January, 2004 under the auspices of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). There were three invited plenary lectures, twelve invited semi-plenary lectures and approximately 105 contributed oral presentations and approximately 65 contributed poster presentations at this conference. Professor Kothare's semi-plenary lecture was entitled "A Framework for Scheduled Output Feedback Model Predictive Control for Constrained Nonlinear Systems" and was co-authored with former graduate student Zhaoyang Wan who recently graduated with a Ph.D. degree and is currently employed with GE Water Technology. This conference was originally scheduled to be held in June 2003 but was postponed due to the outbreak of SARS in spring 2003. At this conference, Professor Kothare also served as chair of a technical session entitled "Model Predictive Control".

• Graduate Student from the Center awarded Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research
  
  Sigma-Xi has awarded a grant to Samrat Mukherjee for a proposal titled “Fabricating and characterizing a "micro sized" membrane reactor- a thrust towards realizing miniaturized fuel processors”. Samrat is a Ph.D. student in the Chemical Engineering Department at Lehigh University. This grant is under a program titled “Grants-in-Aid of Research” (GIAR) under Sigma Xi , which accepts proposals from under-graduate and graduate students from all over the world. Awards range from $100 and $1000 and are aimed at fostering original research among students. The application process involves a grant proposal and 2 letters of recommendations from his advisors Prof. M. V. Kothare and Prof. M. K. Hatalis. When contacted, Samrat said “GIAR has been giving awards for over 80 years and this is a big honor”. Samrat is one of about 10 engineers in the nation to have received this award which is traditionally given to science-based students. Competing applications come from such diverse disciplines as chemistry, physics, anthropology, ecology,cell biology, behavioral sciences, psychology, geophysics, etc. Other details of this prestigious award and a list of awardees can be found at the following web page: http://www.sigmaxi.org/programs/giar/index.shtml

November 2003

• Ashish Pattekar, a graduate student working with Professor Kothare, has received the "PRIDE AT BOEING" appreciation award in recognition of research carried out for determining hardware components (analyzers) needed to support the Boeing Lab for their fuel processor program testing requirements. This was part of his summer internship this year at NuElement, Inc., Alternative Energy Systems, a company in Tacoma, WA working on a contract with Boeing in Seattle, WA.
  
• Faculty members and graduate students from the Center were active at the 2003 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Here are some of the highlights:
  • Professor Kothare co-chaired a session entitled "Control of Hybrid Systems".
  • Professor Luyben received the Computing Practice Award of the CAST division of the AIChE
  • Professor Kothare and his students presented the following six papers at the conference:
    1. Pattekar, A. V. and M. V. Kothare. Integrated microchemical systems for fuel processing in micro fuel cell applications.
    2. Pattekar, A. V. and M. V. Kothare. Miniature Fuel Processors and Fuel Cells for Portable Power: Industry Trends and Potential Applications.
    3. Bleris, L. and M. V. Kothare. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition Based Control of Fluid Flow in Microchemical Systems.
    4. Al-Fadhel, K. A. and M. V. Kothare. Modeling and Simulation of Membrane Microseparators.
    5. Al-Fadhel, K. A. and M. V. Kothare. Membrane Microreactors: Modeling, Design and Operability.
    6. Wan, Z., M. V. Kothare, L. Jiang, V. de la Torre, L. T. Biegler, J. A. Mandler, B. E. Herb, V. G. Fox and M. M. Daichendt. Dynamics and Control of Cyclic Operations in Pressure Swing Adsorption.
  • Professor Luyben and his students presented the following papers at the conference:
    1. W. L. Luyben and P. Jaisathaporn. Dynamic Comparison of Alternative Tubular Reactor Systems.
    2. W. L. Luyben and D. C. Hendershot. Dynamic disadvantages of intensification in inherently safer design.
    3. W. L. Luyben. Simulation and control of steam generator plant.

July 2003

• Professor William Luyben, co-Director of the Center, will receive the prestigious Computing Practice Award of the Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) division of the AIChE at the CAST awards banquet to be held at the AIChE Annual Meeting in November 2003 in San Francisco. The award is given to an individual from industry or academia who has made "outstanding contributions in the practice or application of computing and systems technology to chemical engineering."

  The citation for this award will read as follows:

  The 2003 Computing Practice Award is presented to William L. Luyben for "For pioneering the practice of process control and the integration of process control and design, with particular emphasis on practical distillation control systems, through outstanding journal and book publications and through graduate and undergraduate education."

  We heartily congratulate Professor Luyben for his most important recognition of his long and illustrious career in process control and design.

• At the 2003 American Control Conference in Denver, Colorado, group members from the Center were active in presenting research results. Leonidas Bleris, a graduate student in the group of Professor Kothare, presented a paper entitled "Model based control of temperature distribution in integrated microchemical systems". Also, Professor Kothare presented two talks entitled "A two-level Model Predictive Control algorithm for stabilization and optimization" and "Efficient scheduled stabilizing output feedback Model Predictive Control for constrained nonlinear systems" with co-author Zhaoyang Wan who recently graduated from the group of Professor Kothare. At this conference, Professor Kothare chaired three technicalsessions. The conference was attended by over 900 attendees.
  
• Professor Kothare has been appointed Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control for the year 2004. The Transactions is widely recognized as the most prestigious journal on automatic control that is published by the IEEE Control Systems Society. Prof. Kothare is one of only two chemical engineers currently on the editorial board which is traditionally dominated by Electrial Engineers. As part of the editorial duties, Prof. Kothare will have the responsibility of soliciting reviews for regularly submitted manuscripts to this journal and make publication decisions based on peer reviews.

• At the May 19th commencement held at the Goodman Stadium, two students from the Center received their Ph.D. degrees: Zhaoyang Wan and Phisit Jaisathaporn. Dr. Wan, who was supervised by Professor Kothare, will join the advanced control group of GE Betz in Trevose, PA. Dr. Jaisathaporn was supervised by Professor Luyben and will start a position of Assistant Professor in Thailand.
  

• Zhaoyang Wan, a graduate students working under the supervision of Professor Kothare, successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on April 28, 2003. The thesis was entitled "Efficient Model Predictive Control via Convex Optimization". Zhaoyang has accepted a position with GE Betz in Philadelphia, starting in May-June 2003.

• Graduate student Ashish Pattekar received the Lehigh Engineering Ingenuity Award for Graduate Research and Scholarship at a felicitation ceremony held at the Packard Lab on April 24, 2003. This award is given to a graduate student in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science who has excelled in the area of his or her chosen interest with unwavering dedication and intellectual courage toward a definite goal in a most ambitious pursuit of advanced research. Ashish is a graduate student in the research group of Professor Kothare. We heartily congratulate Ashish for this recognition of his performance at Lehigh.

January 2003

• At the January 12 commencement held in Stabler Arena, the following students from the Center received their Ph.D. degrees: Kulchanat Kapilakarn, Sooraj Karnik, Eric F. Mulder, Leyla Ozkan. These students were supervised by faculty members from the Center.

• Ms Kulchanath (Ann) Kapilakarn successfully defended her thesis entitled "Effect of desired product split ration on the design and control of processes with reversible consecutive reactions" under the supervision of Professor Bill Luyben. Ann, who was supported by a fellowship from the Royal Thai government will return to Thailand and join the department of chemical engineering of Prince of Songkla University, Songkhla, as an Assistant Professor in January 2003. We heartily congratulate Ann on her graduation.

November 2002

Operability studies of continuous and batch processes
Hisato Daoke - Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation
Japan
Tuesday, November 19, 2002 - 2:00-3:00 PM
D314 Iacocca Hall

Faculty members and students from the Center were a strong presence at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in Indianapolis during the first week of November. Faculty members Bill Luyben and Mayuresh Kothare and their graduate students presented the following papers in numerous sessions of the conference:

1. "Steady-State Economic Comparison of Alternative Tubular Reactor Systems" - P. Jaisathaporn and W. Luyben
2. "Plantwide Control of Continuous Multiproduct Processes" - K. Kapilakarn and W. Luyben
3. "Plantwide Control of a TAME Reactive Distillation Process" - M. AlArfaj and W. Luyben
4. "Modeling, design and control of silicon based microchemical
   systems", A. V. Pattekar and M. V. Kothare.
5. "Design and fabrication of a microreactor for hydrogen production by catalytic methanol reforming", A. V. Pattekar and M. V. Kothare.
6. "Modeling of Multicomponent Concentration Profiles in Membrane
   Microreactors", K. A. Alfadhel and M. V. Kothare.
7. "Efficient Scheduled Stabilizing Output Feedback Model Predictive Control for Constrained Nonlinear Systems", Z. Wan and M. V. Kothare. I
8. "A Novel Micro-Membrane Reactor for Fuel Cell Application", S. Mukherjee, M. K. Hatalis and M. V. Kothare.
9. "Advances in Process Control", session chaired by M. V. Kothare with co-chair T. Badgwell.

October 2002

• PMC semi-annual meeting scheduled for Wednesday, October 23, 2002.
• Professor Tom Edgar from the Department of Chemical Engineering, U. of Texas-Austin to present seminar entitled "A Batch Process Control Framework for Semiconductor Manufacturing" on Wednesday, October 23, 2002 at the Center.
• Professor Mayuresh Kothare, co-Director of the Center, is named the Frank Hook Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Founder's Day on October 11, 2002. This professorship recognizes outstanding junior scholar-teachers who also foster personal interaction and mentoring relationships with students.

• Professor Richard Braatz from the Department of Chemical and BioMolecular Engineering, U. of Illinois-Urbana Champagne to present a seminar entitled "Advances in the Control of Complex Chemical Systems" at the Center on September 24,2002.

• Congratulations to Leyla Ozkan, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Lehigh and a student of the Center who successfully defended her thesis entitled "Transition Control Techniques in Nonlinear Process Control" on September 6, 2002.

  Leyla will pursue postdoctoral studies at the U. of New Castle, UK in the Process Systems Engineering Group.

• Special issue of the Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research is planned in honor of the contributions Professor William Luyben, co-Director of the Center. The issue is planned to appear in 2003. Contributions to this issue are currently being reviewed.

• Professor Mayuresh Kothare, co-Director of the Center, receives the CAREER award from the U.S. National Science Foundation. This 5 year program will provide a total of $375,000 to study the dynamics and control of microreactors and integrated microchemical systems.

• Professor William Luyben, co-Director of the Center, publishes a book entitled "Plantwide Dynamic Simulators in Chemical Processing and Control", published by Marcel Dekker Inc.

• Congratulations to Sooraj Karnik, Ph.D. candidate in the Dept. of Elec. Eng. at Lehigh and jointly advised by Prof.Kothare from the Center and Prof. Hatalis from EE, who successfully defended his thesis entitled "Devices, Materials and Fabrication Processes For Integrated Micro-Systems".

Sooraj will join INTEL in Portland, OR in October 2002.

May 2002

• Professor Mayuresh Kothare, co-Director of the Center, receives the Alfred Nobel Robin Award from Lehigh University during the Faculty Dinner on May 2002. This award recognizes a junior faculty member under the age of 35 for outstanding performance in the service of the University and unusual promise of professional achievement.