UC Santa Barbara chemical engineering professor James B. Rawlings has received the most prestigious award for chemical engineering education in the U.S., the Warren K. Lewis Award for Chemical Engineering Education from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The prize, named after one of the founders of the chemical engineering discipline, recognizes distinguished and continuing contributions to education in the field. Rawlings, the Mellichamp Process Control Chair at UCSB, was cited for “groundbreaking research in theory and application of model predictive control, and for leadership in education through landmark textbooks and industrial short courses.”

“I originally started out on an academic career because it enabled me to pursue both of my main professional interests: teaching and research,” said Rawlings, an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering. “And it is very gratifying these many years later to be recognized by my colleagues at AIChE for my education activities. I’ve always felt that dedication to teaching is one way to pay back the many outstanding educators who took an interest in me as a student and showed me how to think clearly about science and engineering.”

“We offer Jim our sincerest congratulations on this tremendous achievement,” said Michael Gordon, chair of UCSB’s Chemical Engineering Department. “This award is richly deserved recognition of his remarkable contributions to scholarship in model predictive control, to education through his popular textbooks and short courses, and to his academic leadership.” 

Rawlings’s research interests are in the areas of chemical process modeling, monitoring and control, model predictive control, and molecular-scale reaction engineering. Driven by his groundbreaking research during the past thirty years, model predictive control has become the process industry’s advanced control method of choice, estimated to have improved industrial profitability by more than $1 billion per year. Rawlings has written nearly 250 published articles, and his work has been cited more than 47,000 times according to Google Scholar. He has co-authored three lauded textbooks: Model Predictive Control: Theory Computation, and Design, 2nd edition (2020); Modeling and Analysis Principles for Chemical and Biological Engineers, (2013); and Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design Fundamentals, 2nd edition (2020).  Rawlings has also taught numerous short courses on advanced state estimation and model predictive control at companies and universities. 

He has received numerous awards recognizing his research and teaching, including the inaugural High Impact Paper Award from the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), the John R. Ragazzini Education Award from the American Automatic Control Council, and AIChE’s William H. Walker Award, Computing in Chemical Engineering Award, and Excellence in Process Development Research Award. He is also a fellow of IFAC, AIChE, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. 

The Lewis Award, which is sponsored by the ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, will be presented to Rawlings at an honors ceremony during the 2024 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Diego in late October.