2023 FOCAPO/CPC Conference

This grant will make it possible for a combination of 25 postdocs and graduate students and 10 early career faculty members to attend the third joint Foundations of Computer-Aided Process Operations/Chemical Process Control (FOCAPO/CPC) conference to be held 8-12 January 2023 in San Antonio, TX. Advances in mathematical modeling, computation, data collection and processing, as well as changes in markets and economic circumstances, have over the past two decades blurred the distinctions between the chemical process operations and process control fields; this motivated the first joint conference in 2012.

The 2023 conference will attract leading researchers in the field of chemical process systems engineering from US and international universities, industries, and national laboratories. It will provide an excellent opportunity for the expected 200 participants to learn about the state of the art in process systems engineering through 6 joint-session plenary speakers, 16 keynote lectures delivered jointly by pairs of speakers with complementary interests, 2 joint poster sessions, 12 parallel FOCAPO/CPC sessions, and ending with a joint topical discussion to summarize trends identified during the conference.

The meeting is structured to encourage interaction between the process operations and control communities, as well as between established and early career faculty, and academic and industrial researchers.

The integration of chemical process operations and process control provides exciting opportunities to address the challenges society faces in human and ecosystem health, sustainable use of food, water, energy, and other strategic resources, mitigating the impacts of climate change, and effective and ethical use of data and automation. In response to these grand challenges, the 2023 FOCAPO/CPC will examine four themes: Digitalization, Sustainability and Globalization, Innovation Speed, and Process Systems Engineering in 2050.

Four of the plenary talks and the four keynote sessions will be organized around these grand challenges; specific technical topics that address these challenges include cybersecurity, process safety, integration of data-driven techniques in mathematical optimization, hardware platforms, integration of PSE with infrastructure, the circular economy, rapid scale-up of chemical and drug processes, open-source modeling, supply chain operations, and the future of process control. These issues will be explored by the 25 postdocs and graduate students and 10 early career faculty members partially supported by this grant to attend FOCAPO/CPC 2023.

Emphasis will be placed on selecting PSE researchers who might not otherwise be able to attend the conference and researchers from groups underrepresented in the PSE community.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.