Energy in Action Seminar Series

IN-PERSON ONLY
Join us for an in-person Seminar and Networking for the University of Houston's "Energy in Action Seminar Series". All seminars are free, but pre-registration is required to attend. The seminars will not be broadcast live, but a recording may be made available later.
Location: Student Center South - Bayou City

4455 University Dr., Houston, TX, 77204

2nd Floor
Speaker: Leo Chiang, Senior Director, Corporate Technology, The Lubrizol Corporation
Title: Beyond the Hype: Amplifying AI Impacts in Fuel and Petrochemical Industry
Abstract:
In the digital era, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how industries operate—powering breakthroughs in image analytics, large language models (LLMs), deep learning, reinforcement learning, hybrid modeling, and real-time decision-making. This talk will reframe the narrative around AI, not as a hype or threat to replace human decisions, but as an opportunity to amplify impact in fuels and petrochemicals industry. The talk will emphasize the need for of Responsible/Trustworthy AI and show industrial examples on how humans and AI must be working in the loop. One aspect is to understand how to incorporate AI methods to assist humans to accelerate discovery in research and to make well-informed decisions in manufacturing operations. The other aspect is to allow humans to incorporate engineering and science domain knowledge to make AI methods smarter. This talk aims to showcase AI success stories in Chemical Engineering. The discussion will extend to anticipated research paths, the necessity for workforce development, and the imperative collaboration between academia, technology providers, and the industry to shape the AI future together.
Speaker Biography:
Leo Chiang is a Senior Director at Corporate Technology of The Lubrizol Corporation. In this role, he leads the global Decision Science team toward enabling faster and more effective decision making across the enterprise, from faster product development, to process efficiency and productivity. Prior to joining Lubrizol, Leo spent 24 years at The Dow Chemical Company. Most recently, he served as a Senior R&D Fellow in Core R&D, where he led the global R&D digital strategy, co-developed digital IP & monetization strategy, Generative AI and LLM strategy, and responsible AI principles.

Leo has a B.S. degree from University of Wisconsin at Madison and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in Chemical Engineering. Leo has co-authored 2 books, published over 70 externally referred journal and proceedings papers, and delivered over 170 conference presentations and university lectures. His work has achieved substantial external impact, with over 8,800 citations according to Google scholar. Leo is on a mission to improve data science and statistics acumen for the workforce at all levels. He is proactive in working with universities to support data science education in chemical engineering and the broader STEM community. Over the past decade, Leo served as a Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering (CACHE) trustee (2019-2024) and held a number of American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) leadership positions, including Executive Board of the Program Committee (EBPC) chair (2022), spring meeting program chair (2018), Industry 4.0 topical conference chair (2018-2020), Big data analytics topical conference chair (2015-2017), and Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) director (2014-2016). Leo is currently a board member of the National Academies' Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology (BCST) and program chair of 2026 Foundations of Process/Product Analytics and Machine learning (FOPAM) meeting. Leo is a Fellow of AIChE and has received many recognitions including the 2016 Herbert Epstein Award, 2016 Computing Practice Award, American Automatic Control Council (A2C2) 2020 Control Engineering Practice Award, and European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS) 2025 Best Manager Award. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2023.

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