Overview

Four panellists who have extensive experience in process engineering will share their professional journeys, from their time as undergraduates to satisfying the Competence and Commitment criteria for Chartership and then becoming IChemE Fellows.

They will reflect on the challenges they faced, the opportunities they embraced, and the lessons they learnt along the way.

Speakers

Ollie Folayan, Head of Process Engineering at Costain

Currently Head of Process Engineering at Costain, Dr Folayan has more than two decades of experience spanning traditional energy industries and emerging low-carbon technologies including hydrogen and carbon capture. He assumes IChemE's Presidency at a pivotal time for the profession, with chemical engineers fundamental to key challenges and developments, including decarbonisation, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing.

In recent years, he has worked on projects relating to energy transition, including gasification of waste plastics to produce hydrogen, direct air capture initiatives, CO2 sequestration through injection into production wells, and the design of hydrogen and CO2 gathering pipelines in the Teesside cluster.

Vivek Tiwari, Solution Development Leader, Honeywell UOP

Vivek is a solution development leader at Honeywell UOP, bringing over 23 years of broad experience across multiple chemical engineering domains. He began his career at Praj Industries, designing bio‑refineries that produce fuel‑grade ethanol for blending applications. He later joined Honeywell, where he developed operator training simulators (process twins) for refinery operations.

Vivek then moved to Technip, spending 13 years in varied technical roles focused on transient simulation, the design of offshore oil and gas platforms, steam‑cracking units, and emerging carbon‑capture and blue‑hydrogen technologies.

Vivek has recently rejoined Honeywell, supporting refinery and petrochemical operators in improving operational margins, evaluating new investments, and advancing their energy‑transition strategies. His recent work includes refinery transformation studies, new refinery development, and guiding refiners through energy‑transition pathways.

He also serves as Vice Chair of the IChemE Milton Keynes Member Group, where he mentors engineers on their chartership journey.

Macsene Isles-Ahite, Process Engineering Consultant

Macsene graduated from South Bank University with BEng (Hons); she has over 20 years of experience as a process engineer in the refining and petrochemical industry.

Since November 2011, she has been offering her services as a self-employed process engineering consultant to various companies operating within the energy sector (including those developing emerging technologies). Her role as a process engineering consultant is often to question design assumptions, to ensure the design is compliant with the relevant engineering and safety standards and to provide technical oversight to process engineering designs.

Macsene is the current Chair of the Milton Keynes Member Group and an IChemE Mentor via the Mentor Match facility on IChemE Connect.

Francesco Del Giudice, Head of Chemical Engineering, Swansea University

Francesco is also a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Scientist, and he is the head of the Rheological Microfluidic lab, part of the Complex Fluids Research Group Centre of Expertise, at SU.

Francesco completed his chemical engineering education, BEng to PhD, at the University of Naples Federico II, with a short period spent at the Catholic University of Leuven. During the PhD, Francesco was also a fellow at the Italian Institute of Technology and a Visiting PhD student at the University of Glasgow. Francesco then moved to the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (Japan) for a postdoc, before joining Swansea University as a lecturer in 2018 and then progressing to Associate Professor in 2022.

Francesco has experience in microfluidic flow of complex fluids, rheology, microrheology and design of microfluidic devices for rheological analysis. Francesco's interests are in Microfluidics and Soft Matter. For instance, we developed innovative solutions to improve the encapsulation of flowing particles using viscoelastic flows in microfluidic devices, and we also developed microfluidic techniques to evaluate rheological parameters not measurable via conventional techniques.

Francesco has several roles across national and international institutions, including Chair of the IChemE South Wales member group, Functional Chartered Member of the IChemE, EDSub committee member, Council Member of the British Society of Rheology, and core member of the Institute of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics.

The material presented has not been peer-reviewed. Any opinions are the presenter’s own and do not necessarily represent those of IChemE or the Milton Keynes Member Group. The information is given in good faith but without any liability on the part of IChemE.

Time

18:00–20:00 BST.

Software

The presentation will be delivered via Microsoft Teams. We recommend downloading the app from the Microsoft website, rather than using the web portal.