Meeting Announcement

December 11,2001

Central Jersey AICHE/Trenton ACS

Molecular Structure and Property:

Product Engineering

James Wei

Engineers make useful things for people, and chemical engineers do it with chemistry. The two main tasks are: what should we make, or Product Engineering, and how should we make it, or Process Engineering. The current chemical engineering curriculum concentrates on process, which is necessary to efficient production, reduced cost and improved safety. However periodically, new and improved products are needed to rejuvenate the industry, and to help customers to lead better lives. There was a time when consumers waited eagerly for the introduction of miraculous new chemical products that transformed their lives, such as: celluloid, nylon, penicillin, synthetic rubber, teflon, and kevlar. We need new products so that we can attract the most able and ambitious new engineering students by introducing opportunities to innovate exciting products that the public will learn to love and reward with high growth and profit.

It is inspiring to consider great product innovations in history, integrating the contributions from marketing, manufacturing and research. The science of molecular structure-property relations is the intellectual tool box of product engineering. The principal intellectual challenge to an innovative product engineer is to find or to design a molecular structure with the properties required for the product to function. The tools available include: a searchable database, quantitative predictions from basic understandings of physics and chemistry, quantitative predictions from practical correlations, qualitative reasoning from trends and analogy. We need to master many excellent computer and internet technologies today that have revolutionized our ability to access information, to analyze information, to do creative work, and to store and disseminate information. We will discuss future challenges in research for the understanding and prediction of molecular structure-property relations, and in discovery of unusual properties and identification of market applications.

James Wei received his Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952, M.S. and Sc.D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT in 1954 and 1955 (with a minor in Fine Arts from Harvard), and a degree in Advanced Management from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1969. He began his career as a Research Chemical Engineer for Mobil Oil Research in 1955 and advanced to Manager of Long-Range Analysis by 1969. He was Visiting Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Princeton University in 1962-1963, became Visiting Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at California Institute of Technology in 1965, and Sherman M. Fairchild Distinguished Scholar in 1977. From 1971-1977, Dr. Wei was the Allan P. Colburn Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. He joined MIT in 1977 where he served as Department Head of Chemical Engineering until 1988, and was the Warren K. Lewis Professor from 1977-1991. Since 1991, he has been Dean of Engineering and Applied Science, and Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor of Chemical Engineering, at Princeton University.

Professor Wei has published more than 100 papers on research in chemical kinetics, catalysis, reaction engineering; he has co-authored seven books and has been editor of several books and journals including: Chemical Technology, member of the Executive Board, 1971-1979; Consulting Editor for McGraw-Hill Book Series of Chemical Engineering from 1964-1992; and Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Chemical Engineering, since 1982. Dr. Wei has participated in many governmental panels including: National Research Council, Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Chemical Engineering Frontiers, 1984-87; and the National Research Council Committee on Critical Technologies, 1991-1992.

Among Dr. Wei's awards are: Award in Petroleum Chemistry from the American Chemical Society, 1966; Professional Progress Award from American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1970; Member of the National Academy of Engineering, 1978; William H. Walker Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1980; Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1982; Member of Academia Sinica, 1982; designated one of thirty "Eminent Chemical Engineers," at the AIChE Diamond Jubilee Meeting, 1983; and Founders Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers for contributions to the profession, 1990.