Barr Engineering

The mission is to energize industry and individuals in a competitive market through education, technology, and networking. Programming spans cybersecurity and battery storage and includes pre-conference sessions, general sessions, opening and closing keynotes, breakout sessions, and an exhibitor showcase. Opening keynote speaker Dan Meers is a professional mascot and the official KC Wolf mascot of the Kansas City Chiefs. Closing keynote speaker Dr. Scott Tinker is Director Emeritus of the Bureau of Economic Geology and State Geologist of Texas, a professor holding the Allday Endowed Chair in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, and CEO of Tinker Energy Associates. He is also founder and chairman of the Switch Energy Alliance and host of PBS Energy Switch and Earth Date. The conference is intended for professionals and skilled workers across numerous industries and fields, with educational and informative presentations rather than deliberate product advertising.

Under the theme “Chemical Engineering Reimagined,” the meeting covers chemical-engineering research, technologies, and emerging growth areas. Program guides highlight AI and machine learning, climate change, industrial careers, and early-career faculty. The AI and machine-learning program includes sessions on process development; polymer simulation, informatics, and data analytics; data-driven pharmaceutical process controls; AI-enabled process design, scale-up, and workforce readiness; nuclear chemical engineering; manufacturing-system modeling; computational catalysis; digital twins in energy systems; biomass utilization; and data-driven medicine. Featured discussions consider digital transformation, evolving industrial ecosystems, sustainability pressures, and changing workforce expectations, as well as ways to incorporate data science into chemical-engineering curricula, degree programs, certificates, and teaching of statistics and programming. Featured lectures address chemical engineers’ roles amid advances in AI, sustainable energy, and an interconnected global economy, and the use of catalysis to convert biomass, CO2, and end-of-life polymers into fuels, chemicals, and materials. Other lecture themes include carbon circularity, process intensification, renewable hydrogen, and pathways toward net-negative carbon manufacturing.