Top American Honour for Engineering Academic

Professor Clive Davies, Associate Investigator at the Riddet Institute, is now a Fellow of American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). Clive is the only New Zealand chemical engineer to have received this honour. He was presented with the award at the annual meeting of the AIChE in Pittsburgh, USA, earlier this year. In the AIChE, a fellow is the highest grade of membership and is in recognition and appreciation of “superior attainments, valuable contributions and service to chemical engineering”. Currently less than 2% of AIChE membership reaches the grade of Fellow.

Clive has been active within AIChE since 1994, and has served in various roles in AIChE activities, including the chair of the Solids Flow, Handling and Processing Group of the Particle Technology Forum (a division of AIChE) in 2001/2002 as an industry engineer, and again as an academic in 2016/2017.

Clive is a chemical engineer whose career has spanned over 40 years and has focussed on handling and characterization of particulate materials. Clive completed his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Imperial College, London. Clive moved to New Zealand in 1976 and spent a couple of years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Canterbury, before a move to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) at Gracefield, Lower Hutt. Here, he pioneered and demonstrated, by constructing pilot- and plant-scale equipment, the best ways of handling bulk materials, compatible with the strict hygiene requirements of the food processing industry. In particular, he was able to make in situ measurement of bulk solids flow, so that the systems could be quality control checked and monitored.

Clive became a distinguished scientist and in 2003 moved to Massey University as Professor of Particle and Process Engineering in the School of Engineering and Advanced Technology. The move to academia gave the opportunity to extend his earlier research to more fundamental aspects of particulate systems and to broaden its scope to other areas. Clive has a large back catalogue of patents, publications and consultancy to industry.

Clive is an associate investigator at the Riddet Institute, focused on mechanical simulation and characterisation of gastric mixing.

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