Recognising excellence and achievement in chemical engineering

The IChemE medals programme covers a range of specialist areas within chemical, process and bio-chemical engineering. It also honours those who have made a special contribution to the Institution’s work to advance the chemical engineering profession worldwide.

The announcement also marks two years since a new range of medals were added to the programme, bringing greater recognition to researchers and academics working in the areas of separation processes, thermodynamics and particle science.

Professor John Davidson, who served as IChemE president in 1970, is the first recipient of a 2015 IChemE medal in recognition of his pioneering research into fluidised beds. John’s work has informed a better understanding of heat momentum and mass transfer phenomena. He will be the inaugural winner of the newly-launched Bird, Stewart & Lightfoot Medal, awarded for achievements in transport phenomena research. The ceremony takes place today, at the ‘John Davidson Symposium’, Trinity College, Cambridge – held in honour of John’s 90th birthday this year.

Claudia Flavell-While, director of policy and publications said: "Our medals recognise genuine achievement within our profession, and we are fortunate to receive a great deal of quality nominations every year. The IChemE medal programme is fully inclusive and open to chemical and process engineers from around the world regardless of membership status. We do this because we want to recognise the best. The 2015 recipients are no exception to this rule; they are the best in their field and should be rightly proud of their recognition."

Winners will receive their medals and awards at a range of events during 2016, including IChemE’s Annual General Meeting, ChemEngDayUK 2016, and at a range of other conference and events.

ROLL OF HONOUR 2015

Ambassador Prize: Rachel Cooke, SAB Miller plc

Medal awarded to Rachel Cooke for her broad range of outreach activities to raise the profile of chemical engineering, and her active role in the Food & Drink Special Interest Group.

Council Medal: Ed Daniels, Royal Dutch Shell

Medal awarded to Ed Daniels for his leadership in developing IChemE’s technical strategy, Chemical Engineering Matters.

Arnold Greene Medal: Keith Johnson, Sellafield Ltd

Medal awarded to Keith Johnson for his long–term commitment to the IChemE-accredited graduate scheme at Sellafield and the Nuclear Technology Special Interest Group.

Nicklin Medal: Colin Hare, University of Leeds

Medal awarded to Colin Hare for his contribution to the process sciences, particularly within particle technology. This medal is awarded to an author who has graduated in the last ten years.

MM Sharma Medal: Roger Sargent, Imperial College London (retired)

Medal awarded to Roger Sargent for his outstanding contributions to chemical engineering research, throughout his career. Sargent also has a medal named after him, and is considered one of the leading minds in process systems engineering.

Sargent Medal (CAPE): Costas Pantelides, Imperial College London and Process Systems Enterprise Ltd

Medal awarded to Costas Pantelides for pioneering work in advanced process modelling technologies and solution methods for large-scale simulation and optimisation problems.

Donald Medal: Professor Athanasios (Sakis) Mantalaris, Imperial College London

Medal awarded to Professor Athanasios (Sakis) Mantalaris for his work in bioprocess engineering with a particular focus on developing integrated modelling-experimental platforms for biological/biomedical systems

Hebden Medal: John Griffiths, formerly of Jacobs Engineering, and David White, D J White & Associates

Medal awarded to John Griffiths and David White for developing ideas and concepts around commercial applications of gasification

Bird Stewart and Lightfoot Medal (transport phenomena): John Davidson, University of Cambridge

Medal awarded to John Davidson for an outstanding contribution into increasing our understanding of heat, momentum and mass transfer phenomena taking place inside multiphase systems, especially involving granular flows, fluidised beds and bubble columns.

Frank Morton Medal (education): Khairiyah Mohd Yusof, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Medal awarded to Khairiyah Mohd Yusof for a long and strong track record of educational development and practice, underpinned by effective pedagogy, with clear impact on the wider community and excellent engagement in wider dissemination.

Lees Medal: Fiona MacLeod, Unit Operations Limited

Medal awarded to Fiona MacLeod for her contribution to IChemE's The Bhopal Loss Prevention Bulletin 2014, with her paper Impressions of Bhopal.

Senior Moulton Medal: Feriha Mugisha Mukuve and Richard A Fenner, Centre for Sustainable Development, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK

Medal awarded to researchers from the University of Cambridge for their paper - Scale variability of water, land, and energy resource interactions and their influence on the food system in Uganda - which was published in Sustainable Production and Consumption, Volume 2, April 2015.

Junior Moulton Medal: Charles Cunault, INRA, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France and Henning Foste, Technische Universitat Braunschweig, Germany

Medal awarded to researchers from INRA (France) and Technische Universität Braunschweig (Germany) for their paper - A novel set-up and a CFD approach to study the biofilm dynamics as a function of local flow conditions encountered in fresh-cut food processing equipments - published in Food and Bioproducts Processing.

The Hutchinson Medal: K E Kakosimos, Department of Chemical Engineering and Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center, Qatar, Texas and A&M University at Qatar

Medal awarded to K E Kakosimos for his paper - Example of a micro-adaptive instruction methodolody for the improvement of flipped-classrooms and adaptive-learning based on advanced blending-learning tools - published in Education for Chemical Engineers.

The Hanson Medal: Peter Gostomski, Chemical and Process Engineering Department, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Medal awarded for Peter Gostomski's article - Down but not out - which was published in The Chemical Engineer magazine in October 2014