Marc-Olivier Coppens attended the 12th World Congress of Chemical Engineering in Beijing on 13-17 July 2025 (https://www.wcce12.com/index.html). The conference, held every four years, had 5,000 attendees, and was very well organised by the Chinese hosts, with excellent halls at the China National Convention Center and extremely attentive volunteers helping participants along. Lectures spanned the whole gamut of chemical engineering, but there was a special emphasis on global challenges and the paradigm shifts required to address them. Not surprisingly, sustainable development and AI were frequent topics.
The outstanding opening plenary by Nobel Laureate Ben Feringa (University of Groningen) on dynamic and often nature-inspired molecular machines set the tone for the World Congress, when Professor Feringa quoted Louis Pasteur: “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.” The Presidents of IChemE (Raffaella Ocone) and AIChE (Joseph Smith) furthered that message, pledging for ethics and inclusivity as embedded in our approaches to chemical engineering research and education, and presenting their perspectives on a just energy transition, also eliminating energy poverty.
Professor Coppens was invited to be the co-chair for the day-long Session 9 on “Inherent Safety and Process Intensification of Chemical Processes”, together with Professors Zhe Yang from Sinopec Research Institute of Safety Engineering, and Guang-Wen Chu from Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT). There were 30 presentations from around the world, including speakers from China and other Asian countries, Europe, the Middle East, and the USA. Marc-Olivier presented a keynote address on “Nature-inspired process intensification for sustainable development”. A full programme can be found here: https://www.wcce12.com/en/331/index.html
During the same trip, Professor Coppens also visited BUCT, presenting a lecture on NICE for students at the School of Engineering, as well as deep scientific discussions with Professor Yongwang Li at Synfuels China (sponsoring several projects on fundamentals of chemical engineering science for process intensification at the NICE group of the UCL CNIE), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Process Engineering (CAS-IPE), warmly welcomed by Professors Qingshan Zhu and Jinghai Li (Member of CAS, SKL of Mesoscience and Engineering).
Transitioning from BUCT to Synfuels, following a delicious lunch, there was a great photo opportunity with former NICE Group members Dr Gang Wang (PhD at the NICE group at Rensselaer, 2008) and Dr Ke Zheng (postdoc, UCL CNIE, 2021), both now at Synfuels China, as well as very hospitable students from BUCT, including Leon Zheng, who will visit us with a CSC Fellowship from September 2025 for a year (group of Professor Yong Luo and Jianfeng Chen)!
