Lorenz Biegler named director of CAPD

Lorenz Biegler has been named director of the Center for Advanced Process Decision-making (CAPD) at Carnegie Mellon University. Biegler, the Covestro University Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, previously served as CAPD director from 1998 to 2005.

Since joining CMU in 1981, Biegler has centered his research on the development and application of concepts and algorithms in optimization theory, operations research, and numerical methods for process design, analysis, and control. He has held visiting appointments at Argonne National Laboratory, National Energy Technology Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Northwestern University, Lehigh University, the University of Alberta, Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University, University of Dortmund, University of Heidelberg, and University of Wisconsin.

The author of more than 500 publications and two books, Biegler has been recognized with the Sargent Medal from the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Walker Research Award, Lewis Education Award and Computers in Chemical Engineering Awards from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Curtis McGraw Research Award, CACHE Computing Award and Chemical Engineering Lecturer Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, INFORMS Computing Prize, and the Long-Term Achievements Award in Computer-Aided Process Engineering from the European Federation of Chemical Engineering. He is a Fellow of AIChE, IFAC, and SIAM, as well as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

The Center for Advanced Process Decision-making is the leading industrial consortium focused on process systems engineering research. The center adds to foundational work at CMU to develop core systems methodologies, including optimization algorithms and formulations, operations research methods, artificial intelligence, and software engineering.

Building on CAPD's four decades of research excellence, my colleagues and I look forward to exploring exciting new directions in advanced optimization and AI for process systems engineering.

Lorenz Biegler, Covestro University Professor, Chemical Engineering

Current research activities in CAPD combine strong basic science components and industrial interactions in the areas of process synthesis and analysis, process operation, process planning, and scheduling. Five core faculty and approximately 40 graduate students, postdocs, and visitors work with approximately 25 company sponsors. Successful industrial applications include optimal process synthesis, design, operations, and control; supply chain, scheduling, planning, and enterprise-wide optimization; sustainability, energy systems, and critical infrastructure; and materials design and optimization.

There are two special interest groups within CAPD: the Energy Systems Initiative, which is led by Biegler, and Enterprise-wide Optimization.

For media inquiries, please contact Lauren Smith at lsmith2@andrew.cmu.edu.