Dr. B. Erik Ydstie is currently Professor of Chemical Engineering. He received his BS in Chemistry from the University of Trondheim in 1977 after which he entered Imperial College, receiving his PhD in 1982. Prof. Ydstie entered academics at the University of Massachusetts in 1982 where he taught and did research until 1992 when he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon. Prof. Ydstie also has held or holds appointments in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and in Materials Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. He held academic visiting positions at the University of Newcastle, Ecole des Mines de Paris, and Imperial College. He serves on the Advisory Boards of the ACS Petroleum Research Fund and Worchester Polytechnic Institute. Prof. Ydstie has had industrial appointments as R&D Director of ELKEM ASA and as Board Member and Chairman of Solar Silicon. Prof. Ydstie founded Industrial Learning Systems to take advantage of his advances in adaptive control; he is the current CTO/CEO of that company.