Five of our Past President's favourite ChemEng365 blogs

29th June 2015

IChemE's immediate past president, Geoff Maitland, handed over the presidential chains to Dr Andrew Jamieson at the end of May. You can read about this year's presidential address by Andrew here.

So to kick-start our new ChemEng blog, the blog elves thought it only appropriate to welcome back blog-elf-in-chief and ChemEng365 blogger, Geoff Maitland, to pick his top five blogs from the past year.


Name: Geoff Maitland

Job: Professor of Energy Engineering

Course: Chemistry, University of Oxford, UK

Graduated: 1969

Employer: Imperial College London, UK

Last month saw my last ever ChemEng365 blog posted online. It was both a sad and happy day for me. Sad that my time as IChemE president and blogger was over, but happy that we have managed to achieve so much and reach so many people in just 365 days.

To keep that momentum going, I hope you will join me in supporting IChemE’s blog elves as they re-launch the blog as – the ChemEng blog (the name was voted for in my recent poll – see ‘Tell me your thoughts on IChemE's blogging future #ChemEng365’).

However, it is important that we celebrate the real success story of my ChemEng365 blog – you, the chemical engineering community - by recognising the top five blogs from the past year that depict the research and work of chemical engineers.

I have to confess that I found selecting a top five very difficult. There have been so many excellent pieces of work featured over the past year, and all of these stories have shone a light on chemical engineering. All the ChemEng365 blog stories are winners, but I have selected five very exceptional ones to receive a special award from me.

The posts I have chosen are an outstanding mix of a special story where chemical engineering is making a real difference and the post receiving a high level of interest from my blog readers.

My top five (in no particular order) are:

Get on your Hydrogen Bike (Day 109) – Dr Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinson, University of New South Wales, Australia

Chemical Engineer develops sanitary towels to help girls stay at school (Day 335) – Freweini Mebrahtu, Mariam Seba Sanitary Products Factory, Ethiopia

How to best load a dishwasher, by a chemical engineer (Day 243) – Dr. Raul Pérez-Mohedano, University of Birmingham, UK

Energy Research in South Africa (Day 284) – Professor Sanette Marx, North-West University, South Africa

 Innovation for Water for Life (Day 152) – Associate Professor Darren Sun, Nanyang Technological University and Nano Sun, Singapore

Special award: I would also like to give a special award to my top reader, Keith Plumb, for posting a helpful, constructive and encouraging comment on (almost) every single blog. Keith made a grand total of 262 comments over the course of the blog - what stamina... or insomnia!

Special ChemEng365 awards are being prepared and I will present these to the winners in the months ahead.

Finally, I would like to thank you all for your support over the course of my presidency and for the kind words I have received from so many of you since I have finished the blog.

If you would like to see your work featured in the new ChemEng blog, please get in touch via the contact page and share your story.

Let’s continue to show the world how chemical engineering makes a difference every day, everywhere – so over to you…please keep blogging.