ChEnected is introducing readers to the recipients of AIChE鈥檚 2024 Institute and Board of Directors鈥� Awards. These high honorees are nominated by the chemical engineering community and voted upon by the members of AIChE鈥檚 Awards Committee.
础滨颁丑贰鈥檚&苍产蝉辫;Industrial Progress Award is given for early-career accomplishments and contributions to industrial practice by an individual working in industries served by chemical engineers.
This year, the Industrial Progress Award is being presented to Dr. Megan E. Donaldson, Principal Research Scientist in the Core R&D Engineering and Process Science Laboratory at Dow. Donaldson is being cited 鈥渇or innovation in advanced separation technology for sustainable chemical processing, as well as for driving culture change around inclusion and diversity in the profession.鈥�
Donaldson and the other Institute and Board of Directors鈥� Award honorees will receive their prizes at the 2024 AIChE Annual Meeting, October 27鈥�31 in San Diego, California.
Megan Donaldson and her contributions
Megan Donaldson鈥檚 interests in sustainability extend back to her graduate research, in which she explored novel solvent systems that enhanced separations and process intensification for efficient catalyst recycling and product isolation.
After earning her BS and PhD in chemical engineering from Michigan Tech and Georgia Tech, respectively, Donaldson began her career at Dow in 2008. There, her contributions have enabled innovation ranging from next-generation separations technologies to commercial implementation of new industrial processes. These processes have incorporated her research in crystallization and distillation process development and scale-up. Today, her research involves new pilot-scale tools for advanced distillation and process technology for polymer recycling.
She has also led industry/university collaborations through Dow鈥檚 University Partnership Initiative. In one example, her collaboration with Georgia Tech created modeling and experimental tools for staged evaluation of reactive chromatography, providing a framework for vetting new sustainable technologies. In another collaboration, with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the partnership focused on novel catalyst recycle technologies.
Megan is also serving the chemical engineering profession through her leadership and volunteerism. Within AIChE, she has been a leader and programmer for the Separations Division, and she served on the Awards Committee.
She has been particularly dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the profession. As a leader of AIChE鈥檚 Women in 91成人短视频 Engineering Committee (WIC) and community, she helped spur an initiative aimed at retention and reentry of women in the engineering workforce, looking beyond pipeline-focused efforts to drive organizational culture shifts.
Also within AIChE, Donaldson has chaired the Societal Impact Operating Council (SIOC) and led projects to advance the LGBTQ+ and Allies Community and the Disabilities Outreach and Inclusion Community (DORIC) toward becoming structured AIChE committees, with the promise of long-term sustainability for those groups.
This fall, ChEnected is presenting profiles of all the 2024 Institute and Board of Directors鈥� Award recipients. Visit ChEnected regularly to meet the honorees.