Danckwerts Lecture
The P. V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture was established in 1985 to honor Prof. Peter V. Danckwerts as a leading scholar in the field of chemical engineering and for his contributions as an Executive Editor of Chemical Engineering Science, the second Shell Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge, and a past president of the Institution of Chemical Engineers. The Danckwerts Lecture is co-sponsored by Chemical Engineering Science, IChemE, AIChE, and EFCE, and is presented in alternating years at the ECCE (odd years) and AIChE (even years) annual meetings (even years).
2025
The 2025 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture is now open for nominations!
Nominees are expected to have made very strong contributions to research and its application in practice, and to be recognised as an international authority in their field. They should be able to give a great lecture that is appropriate to the aim and scope of the journal Chemical Engineering Science.
The 2025 Danckwerts Lecture will be a highlight of ECCE&ECAB 2025, to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, in September 2025.
> more information or to nominate
Deadline for nominations: 31 January 2025
Danckwerts Lecturers 1986 - Present
Danckwerts Lecture 2024
The 2024 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture was presented by
Professor Linda J. Broadbelt
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE), Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
her profile
The Danckwerts Lecture was delivered at the AIChE Fall Meeting in San Diego, USA, in October 2024. The title of the presentation was 'The Confluence of Kinetic Modeling And Data Science: Reaction Pathway Analysis of the Conversion of Macromolecules'.
Abstract: Reaction pathway analysis is a powerful tool to design novel routes to chemicals, identify optimal processing conditions, and suggest catalyst design strategies. We have developed methods for the assembly of kinetic models of substantive detail that link the atomic and process scales. We have applied our methodology to seemingly very disparate chemistries, yet applying a common methodology reveals that there are many ubiquitous features of complex reaction networks for chemical and biological systems. This talk will focus on mechanistic modeling of the conversion of macromolecules for recycling and upcycling, the design of pathways for synthesis of advantaged small molecules, and how data science can be leveraged for kinetic modeling and reaction pathway analysis.
Danckwerts Lecture 2023
The 2023 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture was presented by
Professor Jens Nielsen
BioInnovation Institute, Ole Maaløes Vej 3, 2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
The Danckwerts Lecture was delivered at ECCE14 & ECAB7 held in Berlin, Germany, in September 2023. The title of the presentation was 'Systems Biology of Yeast Metabolism'.
Abstract: Metabolic Engineering relies on a thorough understanding of how the many different metabolic reactions in the cell to be engineered interacts. Genome-scale metabolic models offers a very strong tool for performing quantitative analysis of how the many different reactions in the metabolic network interacts, and through the addition of kinetic and proteome constraints to these models their predictive strength has significantly improved. However, these models can also be used for integrative analysis of quantitative data, e.g. proteomics and metabolomics data. In the lecture there will be presented progress on how kinetic and proteome constraints can improve the predictive strength of genome-scale metabolic models for use in metabolic engineering. Examples will be given of both identification of novel metabolic engineering designs and of using these models for gaining novel insight into the functioning of metabolism.
Danckwerts Lecture 2021
The 2021 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture was presented by
Professor Michael F. Doherty
Michael F. Doherty is Duncan & Suzanne Mellichamp Chair in Process Systems Engineering; Professor of Chemical Engineering, and former Department Chair at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Danckwerts Lecture was delivered at ECCE13 & ECAB6 held as a virtual conference in September 2021. The title of the presentation was 'Practice and Science in Continuous Manufacturing of Pharmaceutical'.
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Danckwerts Lecture 2020
The 2020 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture has been presented by
Professor Massimo Morbidelli
Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
The Danckwerts Lecture was delivered at the virtual AIChE Annual Meeting 2020 on 16 November 2020. The title of the presentation was 'Integration and Digitalization in the Manufacturing of Therapeutic Proteins'.
Danckwerts Lecture 2019
The 2019 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture has been presented by
Professor Klavs F. Jensen
Klavs F. Jensen is Warren K. Lewis Professor in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2007- July 2015 he was the Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering. He received his MSc in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Danckwerts Lecture was delivered at ECCE12 & ECAB5 in Florence, Italy, in September 2019. The title of the presentation was 'Advancing Chemical Development through Process Intensification, Automation, and Machine Learning'.
Danckwerts Lecture 2018
The 2018 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture has been presented by
Professor Sang Yup Lee
The lecture was held at the 2018 AIChE Annual Meeting in October 2018. The title of Professor Lee’s lecture was ‘Biotechnology to Help Achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals’.
Dr. Sang Yup Lee is Distinguished Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He is currently the Dean of KAIST Institutes, Director of BioProcess Engineering Research Center, and Director of Bioinformatics Research Center. He served as a Founding Dean of College of Life Science and Bioengineering.
Danckwerts Lecture 2017
The 2017 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture has been presented by
Professor Rakesh Agrawal
The lecture took place on 4th October 2017 during the 10th World Congress of Chemical Engineering in Barcelona, Spain. The title of Professor Agrawal’s lecture was ‘Challenges and Opportunities for Chemical Engineering in an Emerging Solar Economy’.
Danckwerts Lecture 2016
The 2016 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture has been presented by
Professor G. Q. Max Lu
Danckwerts Lecture 2015
The 2015 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture has been presented by
Professor Christodoulos A. Floudas
from Texas A & M University, USA.
Professor Floudas, the Erle Nye ‘59 Chair Professor for Engineering Excellence at the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A & M University, is a world-renowned authority in mathematical modelling and optimisation of complex systems.
The Danckwerts Lecture "Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration: A Multi-scale Grand Challenge" was delivered at ECCE10+ECAB3+EPIC5 in Nice, France on Monday, 28 September 2015.
Danckwerts Lecture 2014
The 2014 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture has been presented by
Professor Nigel Titchener-Hooker,
head of department of biochemical engineering at University College London (UCL) and director of EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing of Emerging Macromolecular Therapies at the AIChE Annual Meeting in Atlanta, USA on 17 November.
In his lecture, Titchener-Hooker drew on examples of his work on process miniaturisation at UCL, which he described as "ultra scale down". Case studies of the bioprocess optimisation of operations, including centrifugation and chromatography, were discussed in the context of the latest computational techniques and decision making tools. The lecture made a compelling case for process optimisation and cost reduction via better equipment sizing in multi product facilities.
Download the EFCE press release:
- 18/2014 (2014-11-19)
Engineering biological solutions for next generation drug therapies
Danckwerts Lecture 2013
The 2013 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture has been presented by
Dr. Sharon C. Glotzer
of the University of Michigan, USA, internationally recognised with over 160 publications and over 250 invited, keynote and plenary talks on five continents. Re-examining the notion of shape and its role in the bottom-up assembly of new materials, Glotzer's research focuses on the self-assembly of nanoscale systems, looking at entropy, shape and form at a new level, opening doors to brand new creations.
Undoubtedly one of the highlights of a 5-day programme, the lecture entitled "Assembly Engineering: Materials Design for the 21st Century" was delivered at the 9th European Congress of Chemical Engineering in The Hague, The Netherlands on Tuesday, 23 April 2013.
Download the related EFCE press releases:
Danckwerts Lecture 2012
The 2012 P.V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture has been presented by
Professor Guy B. Marin,
Universiteit Gent, Belgium . The Lecture, entitled "Chemical Engineering and Kinetics, a 'Pas de Deux' of Theory and Experiment" took place on 29 October 2012 during the Annual AIChE meeting in Pittsburgh, USA.
Guy B. Marin obtained his Masters degree (1976) and his Ph.D. (1980) in Chemical Engineering at Ghent University. He then held a Fulbright fellowship at Stanford University and Catalytica Associates, USA. From 1988 to 1997, he was a full Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, NL, where he taught reactor analysis and design. He then returned to Ghent University, where he is currently a Professor in Chemical Reaction Engineering.
The main focus of Prof. Marin's research is the investigation of chemical kinetics, targeting the modeling and design of chemical processes and products all the way from molecule up to full scale. His publications include Kinetics of Chemical Reactions: Decoding Complexity with G. Yablonsky (Wiley-VCH, 2011) more than 300 papers in international journals. He is Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Chemical Engineering, Co-Editor of the Chemical Engineering Journal and a member of the editorial board of Applied Catalysis A: General. In 2012 he received an Advanced Research Grant from the European Research Council on "Multiscale Analysis and Design for Process Intensification and Innovation." He chairs the EFCE Working Party on Chemical Reaction Engineering and is an overseas academic "Master" for the "Plan 111" project of the Chinese Government in this field.
He briefly discusses his lecture in the video panel:
http://chenected.aiche.org/video/professor-guy-marin-on-chemical-engineering-kinetics-on-location/
Danckwerts Lecture 2011
The 2011 Danckwerts Lecture, entitled "Design by evolution: engineering biology in the 21st century" was given by
Prof. Dr. Frances H. Arnold,
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, on Tuesday, 27 September 2011 at ECCE8/ECAB1 in Berlin, Germany.
Frances H. Arnold is Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Her main research areas are protein engineering, directed evolution, biocatalysis, biological circuit design, and bioenergy. She is a pioneer in the exciting field of directed evolution and strives to elucidate the principles of biological design. Engineering new enzymes using methods of laboratory evolution for bioenergy, green chemistry, or medical applications is a main focus of her work.
Frances H. Arnold is an internationally highly recognized scientist, and this is reflected by numerous awards and honors for her outstanding work. She is the only woman with the rare honor of being elected to all three National Academies in the United States.
Educated in mechanical and aerospace engineering and in chemical engineering, she is now fascinated by biochemistry and bioengineering - interdisciplinarity is more than just a word for Frances Arnold and her research.