The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) announced that Joseph D. Smith, the Laufer Energy Chair and Professor of Chemical Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology and Chief Technology Officer at Elevated Analytics, will become President of AIChE in 2025. Smith succeeds 2024 President Alan E. Nelson, Vice President of Technology – New Energy at SLB in Houston. Anne O’Neal, Manager of Process Safety Culture and Competency at Chevron, will become the 2025 President-elect and will succeed Smith as AIChE President in 2026.

Julianne Holloway, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Arizona State University, will begin a three-year term as Secretary in 2025, succeeding MaryKathryn Lee, retired Senior Chemical Engineer at ExxonMobil Corporate Research.

Newly elected members of the AIChE Board of Directors include Stephen P. Beaudoin, Professor at Purdue University’s Davidson School of Chemical Engineering; Jerry Forest, process safety improvement consultant at Jerry Forest, LLC; Raymond Rooks, a principal engineer at AVN Corporation; and Frank van Lier, retired Global Senior Director of Process Technology at The Lubrizol Corporation. The directors will serve three-year terms.

Joseph D. Smith holds a PhD in chemical engineering from Brigham Young University, where he was an American Western University Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has held faculty positions at Tennessee Technological University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As the founding Wayne and Gayle Laufer Endowed Energy Chair at Missouri University of Science and Technology, he led the Energy Research and Development Center and founded the Small Nuclear Modular Reactor Research and Development Consortium.

Dr. Smith has published more than 80 papers and holds 12 patents. He authored the textbook Computational Fluid Dynamics for the Chemical and Petrochemical Process Industries and contributed chapters to Encyclopedia of Renewable Energy Engineering; Densification Impact on Raw, Chemically and Thermally Pretreated Biomass: Physical Properties and Biofuels Production; The John Zink Combustion Handbook; The Industrial Burner Handbook; and Perry’s Chemical Engineering Handbook (9th Edition).

With over 30 years of experience in the chemical and petrochemical industries, Dr. Smith contributed to the development of the LGTI Coal Gasifier at Dow Chemical Company, still operational in Wabash, Indiana. He has held positions as Corporate Director of Process Development for Cabot Corporation, Director of Flare Technology for the John Zink Company, and Group Leader at Idaho National Laboratory. He currently serves as an expert witness in gas flares and hydrocarbon processing. Dr. Smith is also a serial entrepreneur, having founded and led three startup companies.