Meetings

Hi Systems & Control Division,

Thanks to those of you who were able to attend today’s CCEC 2021 planning meeting. We had a large and enthusiastic turnout and I know many others were interested but couldn’t attend.

SESSIONS

We were asked to pick 5 or 6 sessions for the conference. We have decided on the following, with some session chairs/co-chairs already assigned. The consensus was to have an application-area grouping (energy, health, AI, analytics) rather than a sub-discipline grouping (design, control, optimization, etc).

We need a few more co-chairs. If you are interested, please email Prof. Tom Adams (tadams@mcmaster.ca)! Graduate students are encouraged as well!

• Industrial Applications in Process Systems Engineering (Co-Chairs: Ajay Ray, 1 or 2 more needed!)
• Data Driven Analytics, Control, and Optimization (Co-chairs: Carl Duchesne, Moncef Chioua, Qinqin Zhu) –> The long description will make clear that Data Driven applies to all three
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Process Systems Engineering (Co-chairs: Simant Upreti, Martin Guay, 1 more available)
• Process Systems Engineering in Health, Medicine, and Biological Systems (Co-chairs: Tom Adams, 1 or 2 more needed!)
• Process Systems Engineering for Energy and the Environment (Co-chairs: Xiang Li, Luis Ricardez-Sandoval, Jamie Rose)
• Methodologies and Fundamentals in Process Systems Engineering (Co-chairs: Nicolas Hudon,1 or 2 more needed)

INTERNATIONAL SPEAKERS

A number of you suggested names to invite for a sponsored, 40 minute plenary. The division will pay for their registration, and will make the final invitations. If you have a name to suggest, please send your nomination to Prof. Tom Adams (tadams@mcmaster.ca) by March 8, 2021.

Hello CSChE S&C Division:

We are now going to have a much more active role in the upcoming conference in Montreal (they insist it will be in person or at least hybrid by then b/c of vaccinations). One of the conference organizers, Systems & Control professor Moncef Chioua at Poly,  will be working with us and is championing us on this, along with the CIC officer in charge of subject divisions, Gregory Patience.  

This is the current plan, subject to division discussion:

• We will be given at least 30 speaker slots to fill with speakers as we choose
• We will pick 5-6 session titles to go with those slots
• We will recruit session chairs and co-chairs much ahead of time
  • Those chairs will actively recruit speakers in addition to the usual regular submissions, to encourage more participation.
  • Those chairs will, with procedure TBD, handle the review process and make accept/move/reject decisions
• We will recruit one to three international speakers, at least one whose registration will be covered from our division funds 

This will give us much involvement in the conference and I think will bolster much more activity and help build our community.

 In addition! We are thinking bigger. Specifically: 

• Creating a six-page conference paper option for accepted presentations that is separately peer reviewed. Think ESCAPE, FOCAPD, etc.
• Self-publishing those conference papers in a conference proceedings via LAPSE
• Selecting the best of those to be invited for full paper submission to Canadian J Chem Eng.

We are holding a meeting on Monday March 1 from 3:30 to 4:20pm EST. All division members are invited and encouraged to participate. Please email Prof. Tom Adams (tadams@mcmaster.ca) for the meeting link.