ISA recognizes 2020 ISA Fellows and Celebrating Excellence recipients

The International Society of Automation (ISA) has announced the 2020 ISA Fellows and Celebrating Excellence award recipients. The recognitions honor the outstanding efforts of ISA members in supporting and advancing the society and the automation community.

There are four new ISA Fellows. The esteemed fellow grade is one of ISA’s highest honors. To earn this distinction, a senior member must possess outstanding and acknowledged engineering or scientific attainments, must receive peer evaluations leading to recommendation for election by the Society Admissions Committee, and finally, must be elected by a majority vote of the Society’s Executive Board.

This year’s Fellows were:
• Donald Dunn, WS Nelson, Highlands, Texas, for the education and standardization of terminology, requirements, and guidance for the process industry-wide safety area of alarm management;
• David Rahn, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Rockville, Md., for the development and implementation of new methodology and acceptance criteria to establish the reliability of critical safety equipment of nuclear power plants;
• John Sorge, retired, Birmingham, Ala., in recognition of his leading, advocating, sponsoring, and technically contributing to activities, projects, and organizations to advance instrumentation and control research on and application of new power generation technologies;
• and, Richard Van Fleet, Andritz, Inc., Cumming, Ga., for providing subject matter expertise and technical support relating to sensor development and implementation of advanced process control and sustained process optimization of pulping and bleaching processes.

There were 14 Celebrating Excellence awardees in 2020, across various categories, including technical innovation, industrial networks, education, mentoring, volunteer leadership, and enduring service, to name a few.