One unexpected challenge for

AIChE: Superstorm Sandy. “We would have had upwards of 5,000 attendees had we not had the hurricane,” said Jeff Wood, AIChE’s meetings director. The conference still saw a good turnout, including 1,374 students who came out for the AIChE Student Conference, held the opening weekend of the meeting.

INITIATIVES A high number of session ideas were proposed to AIChE — and the meeting’s chairs and co-chairs managed to find a place for all of them. “Every session chair and co-chair accepts the [abstracts] that are more promising,” Johnson said, “and with the others, they try and find a home.

They might make them poster sessions. We had a very robust poster session. We were able to catch a lot of the topics that maybe didn’t fall into line with the oral presentation.” Because last year’s meeting was held

in the heart of Pittsburgh, an old coal and steel town, renewable resources were front of mind. “There was a heavy emphasis on energy and environmental considerations,” Johnson said. “We had special sessions in which we were involved in sustainability and biotech- nology. It’s always an important aspect of things.” As an added takeaway, AIChE

put together CDs of the conference proceedings and is selling them on

its website, providing engineers with unlimited access to the event’s content. “There are a lot of people in chemical engineering and academia who are working in areas of renewable energy and energy efficiency,” Johnson said. “[The conference] was very much a reflection of the research interest that is out there.”

. — Sarah Beauchamp For more information: aiche.org

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