The AIChE 2011 Annual Meeting in Minneapolis was held at the Minneapolis Convention Center and the Minneapolis Hilton on October 16-21, 2011.

A session on "Process Simulation Tools for Sustainable Energy" was originally programmed with CO-LaN backing. Jasper van Baten from AsmterCHEM was Chair for this session and CO-LaN Chief Technology Officer was co-Chair. The session, co-sponsored by area 10A, i.e. "Systems and Process Design" and division 12, i.e. "Process Development Division", dealt with process design tools that evaluate the sustainability of process design options from an energy standpoint for use in computer-based process simulation package.

Unfortunately the Call For Papers ended up with no paper proposed in this session so the session has been canceled.

However two papers dealing with CAPE-OPEN were scheduled within the preliminary program. One is titled "Modeling Luyben's Chemical Processes with COCO and ChemSep" and is co-authored by Ross Taylor, Harry Kooijman, Tyler Martin and Jasper M. Van Baten. It will be given in a session honoring William Luyben. The other paper is titled "Real-Time Water and Energy Management In Power Plants and Implications In Electricity Markets" and is co-authored by Victor M. Zavala, Juan M. Salazar, Emil Constantinescu and Urmila Diwekar. It will be given in a session on "Energy and Sustainability In Operations".

Urmila DIWEKAR, representative of the Vishwamitra Research Institute within CO-LaN, is the 2011 recipient of the Lawrence K. Cecil Award for Environmental Chemical Engineering, presented annually by AIChE's Environmental Division. Our congratulations go to Urmila who is the first woman to receive the award in its almost 40-year history. Urmila has been actively developing CAPE-OPEN Unit Operations.