Striking a balance in Teaching Today’s Students to Solve Tomorrow’s Problems
Dr. Ronald W. Rousseau
Ronald W. Rousseau is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chair of the School of Chemical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As Chair of School, Dr. Rousseau has administrative responsibilities for programs that include 41 regular and adjunct faculty members, 22 staff members, a variable number of postdoctoral associates, 120 graduate students, and about 700 undergraduates. He has primary responsibility for management of the fiscal resources of the School and for development activities that increase external funding for both research and instruction.
Both teaching and research are part of Dr. Rousseau's interests. He specializes in separation and purification processes, mass transfer with chemical reaction, and phase equilibrium. Especially noteworthy in his research have been investigations of crystal nucleation and growth, and the role of these phenomena in determining crystal morphology, purity and size distributions. He is particularly interested in the application of crystallization technology to the recovery and purification of high-value-added chemicals, including biologically produced materials. His contributions were recognized through the 1996 Clarence G. Gerhold Award of the Separations Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Dr. Rousseau is co-author of Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes (Wiley 1978, 1986, 2000), an undergraduate text used by more than 80% of the chemical engineering programs in the United States, and editor of the Handbook of Separation Process Technology (Wiley, 1987). He has published more than 135 journal articles and technical reports and given more than 180 presentations on his research and related activities. Dr. Rousseau is a consulting editor for AIChE Journal, a member of the Publication Board of Chemical Engineering Education, and a topic editor for Crystal Growth and Design; he has held memberships on the Advisory Board of the Wiley Series in Chemical Engineering, the International Advisory Board of Separations Technology and he has served as an associate editor of Journal of Crystal Growth. He has provided consulting services for over 45 organizations and given over 130 industrial short courses on chemical process technology, especially crystallization, distillation, and separations.
In 1997, Dr. Rousseau served as Chair of the Council for Chemical Research, an organization consisting of top research officers of more than 35 major chemical companies and 8 federal laboratories and the heads of nearly all PhD-granting chemical engineering and chemistry departments in the U.S. During Dr. Rousseau’s service as an officer, he was a leading advocate for expanding the influence of CCR and its member institutions in the nation’s research agenda.
Dr. Rousseau has played a leadership role in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He served as Director for the period 1990–93 and was a member of the task force that restructured the organization to make it more effective for its 55,000 members. He serves on the Career and Education Operating Council. Past activities include chairing the Publication Committee, chairing a subcommittee that developed a joint effort with the American Chemical Society for publication of Biotechnology Progress, twice chairing search committees for the editor of the AIChE Journal, and serving as a member of the AIChE Task Force on Continuing Education. He is a Fellow of AIChE.
He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Louisiana State University and was elected to the Engineering Hall of Distinction at LSU in 1991.
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