Dear colleagues, At the recent AIChE Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, we had again a special session on Sunday afternoon for the CAST Directors' Student Presentation Award finalists. We had an outstanding group of student presenters: * Christiana Lara, Carnegie Mellon University * Jianping Li, Texas A&M University * Xunyuan Yin, University of Alberta * Anirudh Subramanyam, Carnegie Mellon University * Jiyao Gai, Cornell University * Domink Bongartz, RTWH Aachen * Kristen Severson, MIT * Marc Martin-Casas, University of California Berkeley All finalists gave excellent presentations, and the winner of the 2017 CAST Directors' Student Presentation Award was: Mr. Domink Bongartz for his presentation entitled: "A Sequential Approach to Global Flowsheet Optimization Using McCormick Relaxations". Please join in me congratulating all of our finalists for their excellent work! Best Mario Dr. Mario Richard Eden, Ph.D. Department Chair Joe T. and Billie Carole McMillan Professor Director, NSF-IGERT on Integrated Biorefining Department of Chemical Engineering 210 Ross Hall Auburn University, AL 36849-5127 Phone: 334-844-2064 Fax: 334-844-2063 Cell: 334-329-8958 Email: [log in to unmask] Web: wp.auburn.edu/eden