Two Chemical Engineering Faculty Named AIChE Fellows

Roy Penney, professor of chemical engineering, and Tom Spicer, head of the department of chemical engineering have been named fellows by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. The designation of fellow by AIChE recognizes significant accomplishment in engineering.

Penney recently received the Award for Excellence and Sustained Contributions to Mixing Research and Practice from the North American Mixing Forum, an affiliate of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He has been a member of the AIChE student contest problem subcommittee, which develops and grades problems for undergraduate contests, and he is the author of numerous AIChE Contest Problems including the 2012 problem, “The Production of non-Alcoholic Beer from Alcoholic Beer by use of Membrames." Penney was chair of the Contest Problem subcommittee from 1995 to 2003, and he was chair of programming for the North American Mixing Forum from 1989 to 1995.

One of Penney’s most important achievements in industrial mixing research and development was leading the engineering effort at the A.E. Staley Manufacturing Co. and the German company Henkel Co. to design a chemical reactor system to mix and react dextrose, a sugar made from corn, with fatty alcohol from palm oil to produce alkyl polyglycoside.

Spicer is the Martin Leadership Chair and has served as Head of the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Arkansas since 2001. In addition to administrative duties, he teaches courses on chemical process safety, process control, and mathematical model development. He is a longtime member of the AIChE Safety and Chemical Engineering Education (SAChE) Committee where he has led the effort to distribute SAChE materials over the Web. 

Spicer’s primary research interests include the assessment of hazards from airborne contaminants (particularly those that are denser than air) as well as hazards from fire and explosion phenomena. He has developed and verified mathematical and wind tunnel models of the atmospheric dispersion of hazardous materials. His work has been used by the U.S. Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for hazard assessment purposes.

"Since only two percent of the current AIChE membership are Fellows, I think it is very unusual to have two faculty members from the same department named as Fellows at the same time,” said Spicer. “I am proud to share this honor with Roy, and I look forward to other deserving faculty in our department being so recognized by the Institution in the future.”