1. AWARDS BANQUET October 25, 2007
2007 SCHOOL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
OUTSTANDING CHEMICAL ENGINEER AWARDS

2. PREFACE
The School of Chemical Engineering has a tradition of recognizing alumni who have
achieved distinction as leaders in their careers and who have shaped the chemical
engineering profession. Over the years, only 116 of the school’s 9,000 alumni have
been accorded this prestigious award. Today, the School of Chemical Engineering
faculty honor Dr. Pierre Latour and Dr. Duncan Mellichamp as the recipients of the 2007
Outstanding Chemical Engineer Award.
The 2007 Outstanding Chemical Engineer Award recipients are acknowledged for their
professional achievements, distinct and innovative leadership, and service. Through their
accomplishments, they have brought recognition to the chemical engineering profession,
the School of Chemical Engineering, and Purdue University.
Chemical engineering students and faculty today met with the honorees. Our guests
shared their Purdue and professional experiences, reflected on the ways the School of
Chemical Engineering and Purdue University contributed to their professional expertise,
and encouraged students to cherish the rewards and opportunities their careers will offer.
We appreciate the many friends and faculty who join us to honor these Outstanding
Chemical Engineer Award recipients, and we thank everyone for sharing in this very
special celebration with us.

3. OUTSTANDING CHEMICAL ENGINEER AWARDS October 25, 2007
WELCOME
Sarah Absher, Senior, School of Chemical Engineering
Russel Nix, Senior, School of Chemical Engineering
Dr. Arvind Varma, Head, School of Chemical Engineering
DINNER
INTRODUCTIONS
Dr. Rex Reklaitis, Professor, School of Chemical Engineering
PRESENTATION OF AWARDS
Dr. Pierre Latour, 2007 Outstanding Chemical Engineering
Dr. Duncan Mellichamp, 2007 Outstanding Chemical Engineering
CLOSING REMARKS
Dr. Arvind Varma, Head, School of Chemical Engineering

4. Pierre Latour, MS `64, PhD `66
Pierre Latour is a widely known expert within the oil refining industry. He is the founder
and current president of CLIFFTENT, Inc., and serves as director of Advanced Extraction
Technologies, Inc.
Latour began his chemical engineering career by earning his bachelor’s degree from the
Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where he also served as a co-op student at the DuPont
Polyester Fiber Plant in Kinston, North Carolina. He then went on to earn both a master’s
and doctoral degree from Purdue. Under the direction of Professor Lowell Koppel, his PhD
thesis was titled, “Time Optimum Control of Chemical Processes.”
In 1966, he moved to Deer Park, Texas, to work for Shell Oil as a research engineer in the computer control of
hydrocarbon processing. Latour’s responsibilities as a captain in the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps took him just a
year later to Houston, where he worked at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center on hybrid computer simulations
of the Apollo docking and its separation maneuvers—the very same spacecraft that placed Neil Armstrong on the
moon. He returned to Shell in 1969, but this time in New York City as a senior engineer, coordinating the computer
control of the company’s existing refineries and new construction.
Throughout Latour’s career, he has created, engineered, and managed countless projects worldwide. He has
served more than 60 companies in positions ranging from marketing coordinator to consultant to executive. And, in
addition to CLIFFTENT, he is the co-founder of these companies: Biles & Associates (1971); Setpoint (1977); and
Setpoint Japan (1984). He devoted 18 years as a vice president at Setpoint before retiring in 1995. Latour became
the vice president of business development for both Dynamic Matrix Control Corporation and Aspen Technology
(formerly Setpoint), retiring in 1997 to lead CLIFFTENT.
Since the 1990s, Latour has been developing and promoting a rigorous statistical method to measure the financial
value of the improved dynamic performance of process systems. He calls this method CLIFFTENT, since profit
tradeoffs for every controlled variable are shaped like tents, often with cliffs beyond specification limits.
Latour is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He has published 68 papers, holds one U.S.
patent, and was named Control magazine’s Engineer of the Year in 1999.

5. Duncan Mellichamp is an emeritus professor of chemical engineering at the University of
California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He earned his bachelor’s degree from Georgia Tech in
1959 and then spent a year in postgraduate studies at Germany’s Technische Hochschule
Stuttgart. Working under the direction of Professor Donald Coughanowr, he earned his
doctoral degree in chemical engineering from Purdue in 1964.
Mellichamp has been a devoted faculty member at UCSB for 40 years, where he is known
as a pioneering professor, a campus leader, and the founding member of the Department
of Chemical Engineering. He is the author of more than 100 research publications on
process modeling, large-scale systems analysis, and computer control.
In 1983, his early work with computers produced an edited book, Real-Time Computing With Applications to
Data Acquisition and Control. He co-authored a second book, Process Dynamics and Control, with authors D. E.
Seborg and T. F. Edgar six years later. The text won the Merriam-Wiley Award (1990) from the American Society for
Engineering Education and is currently in its second edition available in English, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.
Mellichamp served as a trustee (1973-87) and as president (1977-78) of Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering
(CACHE)—a national consortium of academic and industrial representatives that further the use of computers in
chemical engineering education.
From 1990 to 1992, he served as head of the UCSB academic senate. Three years later Mellichamp was elected
to the 8,000-member system-wide University of California academic senate. From there he oversaw many offices
and programs, and served ex-officio on the Board of Regents, representing the university’s entire faculty. From
1997 until his July 2003 retirement, he served as special assistant to Henry Yang, chancellor of UCSB, who
previously served as the dean of Purdue’s College of Engineering. As a special assistant, Mellichamp directed long-
range planning and oversaw a new strategic project that involved the land and community adjacent to the campus.
Mellichamp and his wife, Suzanne, each serve on the boards of several nonprofit organizations in Santa Barbara,
California. In November 2006, they were awarded the Santa Barbara Medal, UCSB’s highest award, for their
many contributions to education and to the campus. This recognition has been awarded only 22 times since
1982, for special distinction in humanities, arts, sciences, and public service. Recently, the couple endowed an
undergraduate scholarship in Purdue’s School of Chemical Engineering.
Duncan A. Mellichamp, PhD ’64

6. OUTSTANDING CHEMICAL ENGINEER AWARD RECIPIENTS
Albert Bernard 1988
Robert Bringer 1989
Robert Henson 1989
William Schmitt 1989
William Madar 1990
Robert Postlethwait 1990
Norman Pruitt 1990
Donald Hannemann 1991
Linda Huff 1991
Rohit Khanna 1991
Alan Fox 1992
Robert LaFortune 1992
S. George Bankoff 1993
William Bares 1993
Andrew Barnes 1993
Robert Becherer 1993
Donald Brophy 1993
Bernard Butcher 1993
John Ciborski 1993
Alexander Clarke 1993
Robert Covalt 1993
Robert Forney 1993
Robert Gadomski 1993
Bruce Gonser 1993
Frederick Haas 1993
William Harris, Jr. 1993
James Henderson 1993
John Hesselberth 1993
Thomas Hodgson 1993
John Horner 1993
Harold Hunsicker 1993
Roberto Lee 1993
A. W. Lutz 1993
John Lux 1993
Tom Maliszewski 1993
J. Timothy McGinley 1993
Roger Moser 1993
Gordon Mounts 1993
Randall Murill, Jr. 1993
Paul Oreffice 1993
Donald Orr 1993
Michael Ramage 1993
Henry J. Ramey, Jr. 1993
Robert Reid 1993
Harold Ritchey 1993
John Roorda 1993
Samuel Salem 1993
Dave Schornstein 1993
James Schorr 1993
Yen-Ping Shih 1993
John Siegesmund 1993
Edward Steinhoff 1993
Miller Swaney 1993
Joseph Temple, Jr. 1993
Francis Theis 1993
Vern Weekman 1993
Maynard Wheeler 1993
Robert Wheeler 1993
Robert Winslow 1993
William Wishlinski 1993

7. Jamie Wisniak 1993
Deborah Grubbe 1994
Richard Hazleton 1994
Lowell Koppel 1994
Philip Krug 1994
John Lillich 1994
Joe Stewart 1994
William Young 1994
R. William Eykamp 1995
Che-l Kao 1995
Craig McLaughlin 1995
William Smith 1995
Robert Buckman 1996
Ching-Tien Liou 1996
David Rea 1996
Thomas Storer 1996
S. Margaret Willoughby 1996
Frank Becker 1997
Andrew Crowe 1997
Eleftherios Papoutsakis 1997
Guy Camarata 1998
Charles Kline 1998
Todd Gehr 1999
Stanley Gembicki 1999
Richard Grabham 1999
Emily Liggett 1999
David Pershing 1999
Robert Davis 2000
Abbie Griffin 2000
Robert Hannemann 2000
Robert McNeeley 2000
Max Downham 2001
Donald Dunner 2001
Jeffrey Hemmer 2001
Jay Ihlenfeld 2001
Brian Stutts 2001
Michael Graff 2002
Donald Lamberson 2002
Michael Ott 2002
Nicholas Peppas 2002
Ellen Tobias 2002
Paul Dickensheets 2003
Ben Lipps, Jr. 2003
Tom Maliszewski 2003
Joseph S. Alford, Jr. 2004
Susan Hardman 2004
Rick Roberts 2004
Lloyd Robeson 2004
Charles Davidson 2005
Robert Weist 2005
Arindam Bose 2005
Michael Landisch 2006
James Rust 2006
James Stake 2006
Pierre Latour 2007
Duncan Mellichamp 2007

8. SCHOOL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
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