Prof. Kothare and Ph.D. students present papers at AIChE conference

Mayuresh V. Kothare, the R. L. McCann Associate Professor of chemical engineering and co-director of the Chemical Process Modeling and Control Research Center, chaired a session on Advances in Process Control at the recent annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).

Kothare and his graduate students also presented four papers at the conference, which was held in Austin, Texas.

Leonidas Bleris, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering, presented a paper titled "Efficient empirical modeling of distributed parameter systems" that he co-authored with Kothare. Bleris presented a second paper, co-authored with J. Garcia and Kothare, titled "Embedding Model Predictive Control in Microchemical Systems."

Ashish Pattekar, who received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Lehigh in 2004 and is now director of micropower for Nu Element Inc. in Tacoma, Wash., presented a paper, co-authored with Kothare, titled "A high-throughput radial packed-bed micro fuel processor for portable power applications."

Khaled Alfadhel presented a paper titled "The Energy Equation in Microchemical Systems" that he co-authored with Kothare. Alfadhel, a former Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering, successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis in December and is now an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Kuwait University.