PEERS 2023 Awards and Scholarships
Weston Cregger
Engineering Division Scholarship
My name is Weston Cregger, and I am an upcoming fourth-year student pursuing a dual degree in Paper Science and Engineering and Chemical Engineering at NC State University. I am an active member of the university TAPPI and AICHE student chapters and am on track to graduate in May 2024. I have 15 months work experience with Kimberly-Clark, WestRock, and New-Indy Containerboard. In the summer of 2022, I will be returning to Kimberly-Clark as an intern process engineer at their Beech Island facility. Next semester, I will serve as the TAPPI student chapter IM Chair. In my spare time, I enjoy playing disc golf and cooking for friends and family.
Isabelle Ownby
Environmental Douglas Barton Memorial Scholarship
Isabelle Ownby is a senior at Western Michigan University with a double major in Paper and Chemical Engineering and a minor in Mathematics. She is currently President of WMU’s TAPPI Ts’ai Lun Student Chapter, and has served as Treasurer as well. So far, she has completed a 7-month co-op at Greif’s facility in Tama, Iowa, a summer internship with WestRock in Lynchburg, Virginia, and a summer internship with Axchem USA in Longview, Washington. She is very passionate about the paper industry, and is extremely grateful to put this scholarship towards the remainder of her studies at WMU.
In her free time, Isabelle enjoys rock climbing, hiking, fishing, and exploring the outdoors. She is very thankful for WMU's paper program because it has provided her with countless resources to help her grow professionally and academically. She hopes to continue this growth, and to encourage other students to succeed as well.
Alia Parsons
Charles B. Tibbits Memorial Scholarship
My name is Alia Parsons I'm a rising senior at the University of Maine studying Chemical Engineering with a minor in Business Administration. I was born and raised in Maine and spent a large portion of my childhood in Bucksport, ME. This town was home to a Verso paper mill that shut down in 2014. Growing up in a mill town I've reaped the benefits mills have on a community and the lasting effects it has when they shut down. That's really what inspired me to look into the Pulp & Paper industry as a career! It's an industry where innovation and continuous learning is key and that's something I truly love. With one year left of school and 3 Co-Op terms under my belt, I'm excited to see where the industry takes me after graduation. A sincere thank you so much TAPPI, for the recognition and continuous support for me and many other students pursuing this career.
Doug Singbeil
Engineering Division Technical Award & Beloit Prize
Doug was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and lived in many towns across Western Canada growing up. His family finally settled in Port Alberni, BC where his father worked as a welder in the local pulp mill. Doug started working in the Alberni mill over summers while earning a BSc in chemistry and an MSc in metallurgy from the University of British Columbia. His connection to the industry was cemented when his Master’s thesis supervisor offered Doug a topic that puzzled him: why don’t kraft mills experience stress corrosion cracking of carbon steel in equipment containing kraft liquor? It turned out that they do! The explosion of the continuous digester at Pine Hill, AL in 1981 led directly to a job offer from the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada (Paprican).
For several years thereafter Doug’s research on cracking of continuous digesters continued at Paprican (now FPInnovations) under the auspices of a TAPPI-led research program. His interests moved on to recovery boilers, investigating corrosion of wall tubes and near-drum thinning of generating bank tubes. Subsequently, he began to explore causes and solutions to cracking of composite tubes in collaboration with ORNL and the US DOE. Other topics of research included corrosion of superheaters in biomass boilers and materials selection for forest-based biorefineries. Within FPInnovations, as it is now known, Doug led groups responsible for research on corrosion and material engineering, thermochemical processes, and bioenergy before moving on to serve as Research Manager for Process Engineering and finally as Industrial Sector Leader for Bioproducts. He contributed to the Canadian-sponsored BioPathways project from 2010-2012 and served five years as a member of the board of directors for BioFuelNet, a Canadian university-based network of excellence. Doug retired from FPInnovations in April 2022.
Doug’s involvement with TAPPI began as a member of the Corrosion and Materials Engineering Committee. Eventually he joined the Engineering Division Steering Committee and served in a number of roles, culminating as Division Chair in 2012/2013. Over the years he has authored or co-authored more than 50 papers in conferences and journals. Several of these received best paper awards from TAPPI and TAPPI-sponsored conferences. In 2018, Doug was honored to receive the TAPPI Engineering Division Leadership & Service Award. He was appointed a Fellow of NACE International in 2009 and a TAPPI Fellow in 2022.
Doug and Helen have been married for 40 years and he is a proud grandfather of a 18-month old girl. They have three grown children (a boy and two girls). His family’s passion has been travel and they have travelled and camped across the globe, including most countries in Western Europe, several in South America and New Zealand. They have also camped extensively through the U.S. and Canada, as well as visiting Cuba, Barbados and St Lucia in the Caribbean. In addition to travel he enjoys photography and woodworking.
Dr. Sandy Sharp
Engineering Leadership & Service Award
Dr. Sandy Sharp retired earlier this year as an independent consultant after four decades of solving corrosion problems. Following masters’ degrees in Metallurgy and Corrosion and a PhD in Chemistry, Sandy worked at Paprican before moving to the US where he established and for 28 years led corrosion control programs within Westvaco (later MWV and WestRock). He built a world-class research group in corrosion control before taking early retirement in 2007 to form his own consulting company. He joined TAPPI in 1978 and spend 18 years working through committee and division chairs before being elected to the Board in 1996. In 1980 he expanded a triennial symposium into an intercontinental conference that cycled between the US, Sweden, Canada and Finland and documented many new corrosion-control technologies. While he was its chairman, the Corrosion Committee grew to be TAPPI’s largest technical committee. When he was Program Chair for the Engineering Division, it set TAPPI’s all-time record for a Division Conference attendance (1,426 registrants and 440 exhibitors). He developed a TAPPI short course on solving corrosion problems in pulp and paper mills and taught at the Kraft Recovery Short Course from 1991 until last January, receiving ten awards for the quality of his teaching. For 20 years, he initiated and led multi-sponsor pre-competitive industrial research in national laboratories and universities. Sandy has published 62 technical papers in refereed journals. He was appointed a TAPPI Fellow in his first year of eligibility, was the first NACE Corrosion Society Fellow appointed from the paper industry and is also a Fellow of the Materials Technology Institute. Sandy has received 12 other national and international awards, 8 other awards for meritorious service in corrosion control, the Engineering Division Beloit Prize and TAPPI’s Joachim Leadership and Service Award.
Danny S. Tandra
Outgoing Division Chair
DANNY S. TANDRA is President of Clyde Industries, Inc based in Atlanta, GA, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto (U of T), Canada. He received his B.Eng from Universitas Surabaya in Indonesia, M.Eng. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from U of T and MBA in Management of Technology from Georgia Institute of Technology. His Ph.D. thesis focused on the use of 9 - 14 bar medium steam pressure for sootblowing. He tested the concept at the Irving Pulp & Paper and fully implemented the knowledge at four pulp mills in North America to generate additional power from recovery boilers. Danny's work focuses on cost reduction and energy-efficient processes, recovery and power boiler thermodynamics, deposit formation and removal, and Intelligent SootBlowing strategies. He is an active member of AICHE and TAPPI. He chaired the TAPPI Energy, Recovery and Recaust Committee and the TAPPI Engineering Division.
Adriaan R. P. van Heiningen, Ph. D.
Division Technical Award and Johan C.F.C. Richter Prize
Past Positions
1. Professor & J. Larcom Ober Chair, Dept. Chemical and Biomedical Engineering (Oct. 1998- Dec 2021), Univ. of Maine, Orono, ME, USA.
2. Visiting Research Professor, Department of Forest Products Technology, Aalto University of Technology, Espoo, Finland, Jan. 2012 - Nov. 2014
3. Finland Distinguished Professor (FiDiPro), Department of Forest Products Technology, Helsinki, University of Technology, Espoo, Finland, Jan. 2007 - Dec. 2011
4. Director, Dr. Jack McKenzie Limerick Pulp and Paper Research and Education Centre, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada, May 1994 - Sept. 1998
5. Professor and IRC Chair in Pulping Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada, Sept. 1991 - Sept. 1998
6. Senior Scientist, Paprican, Montreal, Canada, Jan. 1983 - Aug. 1991
7. Research Group Leader, Norit Research, Amersfoort, The Netherlands, Sep. 1977- Dec. 1982
Education
1. Ph.D. (ChE) McGill University, Montreal (1982)
2. M.Eng. (ChE) State University of Groningen, Netherlands (1972)
3. B.Sc. (Chem) State University of Groningen, Netherlands (1968)
Expertise
Chemical engineering fundamentals of wood pulping, pulp bleaching, recovery of spent kraft pulping chemicals, and techno-economic aspects of the “Integrated Forest Products Refinery” which produces biofuels, biochemicals and biomaterials besides pulp, paper and wood products.
Publications, Patents, Honors and Awards
Over 220 refereed publications, 6 book chapters and 26 patents and patent applications
- Johan C. F. C. Richter award, TAPPI PEERS conference, Providence, RI, Oct 30th - Nov 2nd, 2022
- Joseph M. Genco award, April 4th, 2018, Orono, Maine
- 2017 TAPPI International Research and Development Award and Aiken Prize
- TAPPI Fellow, May 2016
- PAPTAC Certificate of Distinction, Paperweek, Montreal, February 3rd, 2014
- "Honoring Dr. Adriaan van Heiningen's Life Time Achievements” at “Emerging Technologies in Lignocellulosic Products and Materials”, 63rd CChE Conf., Oct. 21-23, 2013, Fredericton, NB, Can.
- Best paper in Tappi Journal in the year 2012
- Best article in Nordic Pulp and Paper Research 2010
- 2010 Andrew Chase Forest Products Division Award, AIChE Forest Products Div.
- Howard Rapson Memorial Award for best bleaching paper, February 3, 2009
- Elected Fellow Canadian Academy of Engineering, June 17th, 2008
- Visiting Professor, VTT Processes, Espoo, Finland, Sept. 2005
- Distinguished Visiting Professor, IPST, Georgia Tech., Atlanta, GA, January - April, 2003
- 2002 Ashley S. Campbell Award, University of Maine, October 2002
- Walter J. Bublitz Award, Tappi Pulping Conference, Seattle, November 2001
- High Impact Paper, Tappi Pulping Conference, Montreal, 1998
- Elected Fellow of The Chemical Institute of Canada, June 1996
- Presidential Citation for "Innovative approach to bleaching kinetics and its impact on Paprican's bleaching program", Pointe Claire, Que., December 1989