-€œThe father of Process Systems Engineering-€ - founding Fellow to receive Sir Frank Whittle Medal
25/01/2017 Royal Academy of Engineering
A leading chemical engineer who been advancing the field of process systems engineering since the 1950s is to be honoured with the Royal Academy of Engineering's Sir Frank Whittle Medal.Roger Sargent FREng, Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London and former director of its Centre for Process Systems Engineering, has spent his career of over 60 years championing the application of mathematics and computing to the solution of engineering problems in the process industries.
He is to receive the Sir Frank Whittle Medal, for outstanding and sustained achievement, at the Royal Academy of Engineering's Annual General Meeting on 8 September, 40 years since the inaugural meeting of the Academy at which he was a founding Fellow.
Professor Sargent was among the first to recognise the need for a branch of chemical engineering concerned with the issues of how to design and operate processing facilities, leading the way in developing an approach based on mathematical techniques and developing the first commercially-available simulation software for the industry, SPEEDUP. He went on to found the Centre for Process Systems Engineering (CPSE) in 1989 at Imperial College London, which created the spin-out company Process Systems Enterprise (PSE Ltd). In 2007, PSE Ltd won the Academy's MacRobert Award for its innovative modelling software.
As an academic, Professor Sargent has supervised over fifty PhD students, many of whom have gone on to become the world's leading chemical engineers, in turn inspiring a network of over 2,000 students with his vision and approach.
Professor Sargent served as President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers from 1973-74, and in 1976 was one of the 130 engineers to form the Fellowship of Engineering, later to become the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 1993 he was elected as a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Engineering.
On receiving the award, Professor Sargent said: "I am proud to follow in the tradition set by Sir Frank Whittle".
Professor John Perkins CBE FREng, who nominated Professor Sargent for the award, said: "Roger Sargent is the undisputed father of Process Systems Engineering, a discipline he has played a pivotal role in defining and developing during the course of his long and productive career. It is no exaggeration to say that the vast majority of PSE researchers globally can trace their academic origins back to him. His impact on industrial practice and academia has been enormous."
For more information, please contact:
The Royal Academy of Engineering
Prince Philip House
3 Carlton House Terrace
London
SW1Y 5DG
Tel: +44 (0)20 7766 0600
Fax: +44 (0)20 7930 1549
Email: aaron.boardley@raeng.org.uk
Web: www.raeng.org.uk
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