Rhinehart Inducted into the Automation Hall of Fame

CONTROL magazine (www.controlmagazine.com) inducts about three people into its “Automation Hall of Fame” each year, by a nomination and selection process primarily comprised of practicing engineers within the process control community.  The 2005 inductees are Russ Rhinehart, Bartlett Professor and ChE School Head; Dick Caro, former Vice President of ARC Advisory Group and Chair of the ISA SP50 Fieldbus Standards Committee, and Bill Luyben former Control Engineer for DuPont who taught at Lehigh University for the past 36 years.  The dinner awards ceremony took place at the World Batch Forum, May 15, at the Trump Taj Mahal, in Atlantic City, NJ.

 Rhinehart started his career as a process engineer for Celanese in Charlotte, NC, and was immediately attracted to automatic control and statistical process control strategies.  Through several promotions Russ found himself enjoying coaching new engineers.  Then in the early 80s, when computers entered households, Russ was captured by the possibility of using computers for automatic on-line process analysis and control.  He enjoyed industry, but left a 13-year career to return to school to get a PhD so that he could start enjoying coaching new engineers and investigating possibilities in automation on a full-time basis.

 In his acceptance speech, he said, “Academic curiosity and industrial practicality often go in independent directions.  And, partly, I returned to academe with a mission to bridge the gap in both instruction and knowledge discovery. 

 “Academics have solutions.  But, they are usually incomplete.  Industry has problems, and can use the academic knowledge. But, many factors keep academe and industry separated. To maximize benefit from technology discovery and use, and to shape education to prepare engineers, academe and industry must find better ways to interact.” 

 Even after 20 years of an academic career, Rhinehart’s teaching and research retain the industrial values of practicality.  Outside of the university, his efforts in the control community have also been aimed at bridging the gap.  He co-founded the Masters of Control System Engineering program and the Measurement and Control Engineering Center at OSU.  While in the first part of his academic career, he co-founded the Process Control and Optimization Center at Texas Tech University.  He developed the Control Engineering Practice Award and the Tutorial Sessions for the American Control Conference, and served in many roles within ISA (the Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society), the AACC (American Automatic Control Council), and PCSF (Process Control Systems Forum).  He was General Chair for the 2002 American Control Conference and a member of the Technical Advisory Board for Pavilion Technologies.  Presently he is Treasurer for the AACC, Editor-in-Chief of ISA Transactions, and a member of the Interim Governing Board for the PCSF.

 Russ was cited for contributions to both academe and the practice – bringing practical experience into education and research, and theoretical contributions to the practice.

 Past inductees of the Automation Hall of Fame are: Karl Astrom, Terry Blevins, Lynn Craig, Charlie Cutler, Marion “Bud” Keyes, Bela Liptak, Greg McMillian, Greg Shinskey, Thomas Stout, Terry Tolliver, Harold Wade, and Ted Williams.

 The photo shows Dr. Rhinehart holding the award in his home office.