School of Engineering

B. Wayne Bequette
Professor
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem-eng/WWW/faculty/bequette/

Department Affiliation:

Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Education:

Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin
Chemical Engineering

M.S., University of Texas, Austin
Chemical Engineering

B.S., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Chemical Engineering

Background:

Dr. Bequette worked for three years as a process engineer for American Petrofina between his undergraduate and graduate studies. From 1986 to 1987 he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Texas and from 1987 to 1988 he was a Visiting Lecturer with the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Davis. He joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1988 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1994 and Professor in 2000. Dr. Bequette has spent sabbaticals at Merck Research Laboratories and Northwestern University.

Dr. Bequette has had many leadership roles in American Control Conference activities, serving as the Finance Chair (1991), Publications Chair (1995), Publicity Chair (1998), Program Chair (2001) and General Chair (2003). He was the AIChE Director on the Board of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) in 2000-1, and is currently President of the AACC for 2008-9. Dr. Bequette also served as the Chair of the Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) division of AIChE in 2006. He was inducted into the Arkansas Academy of Chemical Engineers in 2007.

Dr. Bequette is the author of Process Dynamics: Modeling, Analysis and Simulation (1998) and Process Control: Modeling, Design and Simulation (2003), both published by Prentice Hall. He was an Associate Editor of Automatica (1993-2005) and served as the Guest Editor of Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics (February, 2005), for a Symposium on Algorithms for Continuous Glucose Monitoring and Control. Dr. Bequette edited two special issues on Process Control for IEEE Control Systems Magazine (Aug. & Dec., 2006). He is a founding member of the editorial board for the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, and co-edited three special issues of the journal in 2007.

Research Interests:

My research effort involves the development of systems engineering techniques for a wide variety of chemical, biological and biomedical systems, with applications ranging from healthcare to renewable energy. A fundamental problem that we continue to work on is the modeling and control of nonlinear systems, with a major focus on model predictive control algorithms. Specific applications include:

Continuous glucose monitoring and control for diabetes

Pharmaceutical process analytical technologies (PAT)

Fuel cell systems

Rotating disk biochemical reactors

Chromatography

Drug infusion control in critical care

Renewable energy and sustainability: biodiesel and bioethanol

Systems engineering approaches for disaster relief

Hydrogen production using thermochemical cycles

Integrated coal gasification and combined cycle (IGCC) power plants