Chemical Engineering Personal Achievement Award
— Honoring the human component

Chemical Engineering focuses the majority of its monthly content on technologies, and the companies that supply them. But while products and services bond the CPI together, the strength of that bond depends unequivocally on people. In professional life, individuals — more than corporations or institutions — teach us, inspire us and drive us to succeed. If you would like to bring recognition to someone whose excellence in chemical engineering you admire, consider nominating him or her for Chemical Engineering’s Personal Achievement Award. See Table 1 for a list of past winners.

The aim of the CE Personal Achievement Award is to honor individuals for distinguished careers. The awards salute individual excellence in diverse areas — research, development, design, plant operations, management and other activities. The distinction can also emerge in less-ordinary ways, such as government service. The one major criterion is that the individual’s career must have related, fully or largely, to the use of chemical engineering principles in solving industrial, community or other problems.

Offered biennially since 1968, the CE Personal Achievement Award complements CE’s Kirkpatrick Award for Chemical Engineering Achievement, which is presented in alternate years, and honors companies — as opposed to individuals — for specific chemical-process technology.

The selection process

Early in a given award year (even numbered years), readers are invited to submit Personal Announcement Award nominations through an announcement in the magazine. Nominees may live anywhere in the world, and need not be chemical engineers by degree. The unyielding requirement is a record of notable achievement in the application of chemical engineering principles for solving industrial, community or governmental challenges.

Around the middle of the award year, the nominations are reviewed by a Board of Judges, which consists of chemical engineering professors. Professors are invited to serve on the board based on the recommendation of their own colleagues. The judges work independently of each other, either assigning a weight to or casting a vote for one or more of the nominees. Depending on how the resulting overall ranking is clustered, one or more winners are designated. An article announcing the winners appears in the December issue of CE. At around the same time, winners are presented with a plaque at a ceremony honoring their achievements.

Submit nominations

The CE Personal Achievement Awards are given out biennially, and nominations for the 2012 award will be accepted beginning in January 2012. If you would like to nominate a candidate for the CE Personal Achievement Award, send a letter or email to CE with the following information:

• Name, job title and address of the candidate
• Your name and address
• A summary of around 500 words that describes the nominee’s career and illustrates his or her creativity and general excellence in the practice of chemical engineering. At least some of the activity must have taken place during the three-year period ending December 31, 2011. Without divulging confidential information, try to be specific about key contributions
• CE encourages those submitting nominations to ask others to provide information in support of the nominee.

Address: Chemical Engineering, c/o Scott Jenkins, 88 Pine Street, Suite 510, New York, NY 10005
Email: awards@che.com

Past winners of the Chemical Engineering Personal Achievement Award

* Click on award year for more information on the winner.
* Note: No electronic archives exist for 1984 and prior.