Westmoreland named AIChE president for 2013

Dr. Phillip R. Westmoreland, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and executive director of the Institute for Computational Science and Engineering (ICSE) at North Carolina State University, has been elected president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) for the 2013 term.

Westmoreland, who was named a Fellow of AIChE in 2005, has been an active member of the professional society for close to 40 years, dating to when he was a student at NC State. He will serve as the organization’s president-elect in 2012 and as past president in 2014.

In his role leading ICSE at NC State, Westmoreland works with faculty across campus to develop the necessary methods, tools and workforce to accelerate the application of advanced computing. His research focuses on molecular modeling and reaction theory, clean combustion, and biofuels.

Westmoreland began his work with AIChE in the mid-1970s, when he was appointed public relations chair and secretary of the organization’s Knoxville-Oak Ridge Section. Later, he was elected chair of the Western Massachusetts Section and director of the Central New England Section.

Westmoreland is the founding chair of AIChE’s Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum (CoMSEF) and chair of the National Program Committee, also part of AIChE. He has served on the AIChE board of directors and has also been part of the organization’s Nanoscale Science Engineering Forum.

AIChE was founded in 1908 and has more than 40,000 members. It provides leadership in advancing the chemical engineering profession.

Prior to coming to NC State in 2009, Westmoreland was a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He served as acting head of the department from 2003 to 2005. He has also worked as a research engineer with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Coal Technology Program, a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Westmoreland is also an academic trustee and past president of the educational nonprofit Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering (CACHE) Corporation, which works to promote cooperation among universities, industry and government in the development and distribution of computer-related and technology-based educational aids for the chemical engineering profession.

His many honors from AIChE include the Gary Leach Award, the George R. Lappin Award, the NATE Award and the National Public Relations Award. He has also received the William H. Corcoran Award, which is given by the American Society for Engineering Education, and shared an NSF Director’s Award for Collaborative Integration.

Westmoreland received his bachelor’s degree from NC State in 1973, his master’s degree from Louisiana State University in 1974 and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986, all in chemical engineering.