ISA Publications Department and S&P Department honor technical experts at awards ceremony

Each year at a special awards ceremony and reception, the ISA Publications Department and the Standards and Practices Department honor and thank all technical experts and standards leaders, who help review, develop, and deliver technical resources to the automation profession. Held on Tuesday evening at ISA Automation Week 2012, several authors and standards leaders received awards for their contributions to InTech magazine, ISA Books, ISA Transactions, and Standards. The ISA Publications Department and the Standards & Practices Department greatly appreciate all contributions to ISA throughout the year and extend a big thank you to all.

The evening closed with a special presentation by Dr. R. Russell Rhinehart, past Editor-in-Chief, celebrating the 50^th Anniversary of ISA Transactions. Rhinehart said, “ISA Transactions has recently completed its 50th year of publication of refereed scientific articles related to the science and engineering of measurement and control.  The first issues were in 1962.  It has shown progressive growth, increases in manuscript quality and reader impact, and has become international scope – a jewel in the ISA Publications portfolio.”

Congratulations to all of this year’s award recipients and a special salute to ISA Transactions and all its technical authors and editors for 50 years of success!

Award Winners

Keith Otto Award recognizes the author(s) of the best article in InTech magazine. The award was presented to David Twohig for his excellent contribution in the September/October 2011 issue of InTech entitled, “Utility Optimization – Driving economic performance through the utilization of automation technologies.” Twohig is working as a Senior Engineering Specialist for Gilead Sciences, responsible for Automation System on their Cork manufacturing site in Southern Ireland. He has a degree in Applied Physics and is presently working on a research Masters with the Chemical Engineering Dept. at Newcastle University. He is a full member of the Institute of Engineering & Technology and is presently serving as an executive committee member for the Control and Automation Community.

Nels Tyring Award recognizes the author of the best article in one of the Society’s journals. Alexandre Augusto da Silva, Geraldo Luiz Bellotti, and Heitor Hiroshi Chaya are this year’s recipient of the Nels Tyring Award for their Special Section article, “Asset Management: Utilizing asset data for predictive asset management” which was judged to be the best article published in the November/December InTech during the past year.

Alexandre Augusto da Silva is a senior mechanical technician at Braskem SA. He has 15 years of experience in the predictive maintenance of rotating equipment based on vibration data collection and analysis. Geraldo Luiz Bellotti is manager of instrumentation reliability engineering at the Braskem SA polypropylene plant in Paulinia, Brazil. He has worked with various instrumentation and control systems as well as advanced control applications for more than 35 years. Heitor Hiroshi Chaya is senior automation engineer at his own consulting firm, Chaya Automation. He holds a university degree in electrical engineering and has worked in industrial automation for 13 years.

John McCamey Award recognizes a promising young author who publishes their first article in one of the Society’s publications.  This year’s recipient is Alex Tirtichny for his article in InTech titled, Education a big part of being automation professional, which was judged to be the best young author article during the past year.  Alex Tirtichny recently obtained a Master’s Degree in Instrumentation from the St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation. His major was in navigation systems but he now researches and designs micromechanical devices.Alex is a 2010 recipient of one of the ISA Food and Pharmaceutical Division scholarships.

Raymond D. Molloy Award is given in honor of Raymond D. Molloy’s contributions to the automation profession. Molloy was a major driving force in the ISA publications program for more than 20 years and maintained a keen interest in ISA publishing quality books that meet the needs of measurement and control professionals. This award was presented to Eddie Habibi and Bill Hollifield, who are the 2011 best-selling ISA authors for their book Alarm Management: A Comprehensive Guide, Second Edition. Their book sold the most units of any new book published by ISA in 2011.

Eddie Habibi is the Founder and CEO of Houston-based PAS. Prior to establishing PAS, Eddie held various positions at Schlumberger and Honeywell International. Eddie holds an engineering degree from the University of Houston and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas.

Bill Hollifield is the Principal Consultant at PAS responsible for the work processes and products, intellectual property, and software product directions for both Alarm Management and High Performance HMI. He is a member of the ISA-18 Alarm Management committee, the ISA-101 HMI committee, the API-1167 Alarm Management committee, and is a co-author of the Electric Power Research Institute’s Alarm Management Guidelines.

Recipients of the ISA Standards & Practices Department Awards

Angela E. Summers for outstanding dedication, leadership, technical expertise and contributions to industry safety in the development of ISA-84.91.01-2012, Identification and Mechanical Integrity of Safety Controls, Alarms, and Interlocks in the Process Industry; and ISA-TR84.00.03-2012, Mechanical Integrity of Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS).

James H. Federlein for outstanding leadership and technical expertise as Chair of ISA105 in the development of ANSI/ISA-62381-2011, Automation Systems in the Process Industry—Factory Acceptance Test, Site Acceptance Test, and Site Integration Test; and ANSI/ISA-62382-2012, Automation Systems in the Process Industry—Electrical and Instrumentation Loop Check.

Bryan Hayes for outstanding leadership and technical expertise as Chair of ISA107, Working Group 1, in developing ISA-107.1, Industry Standard File Format for Revolution-Based Tip Timing Data.

Steven A. Brown for outstanding and cooperative participation with ISA during the drafting, editing, and introduction of ANSI/ISA-61010-1 (82.02.01)-2012 and ANSI/ISA-61010-2-030 (82.02.03)-2012 and for leading UL to publish identical requirements in these jointly published documents.

KV Gandhi for his technical expertise and contributions in the development of ISA-TR84.00.03-2012, Mechanical Integrity of Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS).

Daniel Lee for outstanding leadership and technical expertise in the development of ISA-TR5.1.01/ISA-TR77.40.01-2012, Functional Diagram Usage.

Vic Hammond for his longstanding contributions in maintaining the records of the ISA99 security committee and directing working group activities.

Jeff Potter for his initiative, persistence, leadership, and technical expertise in directing the development of ISA-62443-3-3, System Security Requirements and Security Levels.

ISA Transactions Best Paper Award recognizes the best technical paper published in ISA Transactions in the previous year. ISA Transactions plays an important role in maintaining ISA’s visibility and reputation in the automation and control research community. This award was presented to Young-Chul Choi, Jin-Ho Park, and Kyoung-Sik Choi for their paper titled, “An impact source localization technique for a nuclear power plant by using sensors of different types,” ISA Transactions, Vol. 50, No. 1, which was judged to be the best paper published in that journal in January 2011.