It is my pleasure to announce that Nael H. El-Farra has been selected as CAST 10B Program Coordinator for 2015.

Dr. H. El-Farra received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering, with highest honors, from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1998 and 2004, respectively. Since July 2004, he has been with the University of California, Davis, where he is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. His theoretical research interests include model-based diagnosis and fault-tolerant control of nonlinear distributed parameter systems with applications to transport-reaction and particulate processes; analysis and design of networked process control and monitoring systems with applications to large-scale chemical process networks and distributed energy systems; and model-based control, monitoring and reconfiguration of nonlinear hybrid process systems. He has published more than 120 refereed articles in leading scientific journals and conference proceedings, and one book on “Control of Nonlinear and Hybrid Process Systems: Designs for Uncertainty, Constraints and Time-Delays” (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2005). Dr. El-Farra has received several awards for his teaching and research work including, a Research Initiation Grant from the ACS Petroleum Research Fund in 2007, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 2008, and the AIChE Faculty of the Year Award from the UC Davis AIChE Student Chapter in 2012. He recently edited a special volume of the journal Chemical Engineering Science on control of energy systems (2012), and a special volume of the International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control on fault-tolerant process control (2012). He has organized several invited sessions at the American Control Conference, and is currently a member of the IEEE Control System Society Conference Editorial Board for ACC and CDC. He is also an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Control System Technology.

Please join me in wishing Nael success in this new endeavor.

Sincerely,

Michael Baldea

Michael Baldea, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Department of Chemical Engineering
Cockrell School of Engineering

The University of Texas at Austin
200 E Dean Keeton St. Stop C0400
Austin, Texas 78712-1589

CPE 4.466 / tel: (512) 471-1281 / fax: (512) 471-7060
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http://baldeagroup.cloudaccess.net

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