Mannan Slated to Deliver Distinguished Lecture at Iowa State University

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, March 10, 2008 - M. Sam Mannan, professor in Texas A&M University’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, is scheduled to deliver Iowa State University’s Wendell Miller Distinguished Lecture, Friday, March 14.

Mannan, who also serves as director of Texas A&M’s Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center, will discuss “globalization and its challenges in industrial process safety” at the lecture, which is sponsored by ISU’s College of Engineering and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

In the industrial safety arena, Mannan says, globalization introduces significant challenges due to the diversity in defining what is considered “safe” and what is accepted as the appropriate level of tolerability of risk. These concerns with globalization processes become even more significant due to the high level of uncertainties associated with the need to balance between safety and other competing operational goals, he adds.

Among the current initiatives to address these challenges are the Globally Harmonized System for the Classification and Labeling of Hazardous Chemicals and the development of a system known as the Mutual Acceptance of Data projects, Mannan says.

While Mannan calls these initiatives first steps in the right direction to add international domain to the manufacturing/processing of chemicals, he says there is a need to build a coherent frame work to address diversity challenges to the process safety arena.

A renowned expert in process safety and risk management operations, Mannan is holder of the T. Michael O’Connor Chair I in Chemical Engineering. As director of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center, he oversees the center’s programs and research activities, which are aimed at enhancing safety in the chemical process industries.

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