2018 International Symposium

October 23-25, 2018 | College Station, Texas

This symposium serves as the crossroads for process safety where industry, academia, government agencies and other stakeholders come together to discuss critical issues of research in process safety. Experts from around the world will gather as part of this two and a half-day symposium, to share the latest information on the hottest topics aimed at making the process industry a safer place. The 2018 International Symposium of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center will be held at the College Station Hilton Conference Center on October 23-25, 2018.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

LAURIE MUSE SHELBY, CIH, CSP, M.S

Vice President – Environmental, Health and Safety

Tesla, Inc.

Laurie Shelby joined Tesla Inc. as the EHS Vice President in October 2017. She leads worldwide EHS for approximately 50,000 employees in the automotive, energy, and sales, service, delivery operations.

Previously, she was the EHS Vice President for Alcoa Inc. where she led the global EHS process for approximately 15,000 employees in the mining, refining, smelting, and rolling operations. Prior roles at Alcoa included EHS Director for United States primary aluminum operations and EHS global audit Manager.

Laurie is active in the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) and is a sub-committee lead for the Health and Safety Management System (Z10) fatal and serious injury reduction team. Laurie is a human and organizational performance expert known for her new view thinking to improve safety.

Laurie completed her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Radford University. She earned her master’s in Industrial Hygiene/Biomedical Engineering from Virginia Commonwealth University/Medical College of Virginia. Laurie is also a Certified Safety Professional (CSP) and Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH).

Prior to joining Alcoa and Tesla, Laurie worked as an EHS consultant in the Washington DC area where she led numerous federal environmental projects and Superfund site cleanups. She also worked for Dominion Energy as an industrial hygienist.

Laurie and her husband, Joe, live in Alameda, California, but they are both native Virginians. She has 2 daughters, one who is working on her Environmental Science Masters at University of Virginia and the other is in law school at Dickinson – Penn State.

Prof. Genserik Reniers

Safety and Security Science Group

Delft University of Technology

Genserik Reniers, a Master of Science in chemical engineering, is Full Professor at the Safety and Security Science Group of the Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, where he teaches Risk Analysis and Risk Management. At the University of Antwerp in Belgium, he is a Full professor lecturing amongst others in chemistry, organic chemistry, and Technological Risk Management. At the Brussels campus of the KU Leuven, Belgium, he lectures as a Professor, amongst others, in Engineering Risk Management. His main research interests concern the collaboration surrounding safety and security topics and socio-economic optimization within the chemical industry. Amongst many other academic achievements and output, he has published 150+ scientific papers in high-quality academic journals, and has (co-)authored and (co-)edited some 35 books. He serves as an Editor of the Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries and as an Associate Editor of the Journal ‘Safety Science’.

Prof. Jenq-Renn Chen

National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan

Jenq-Renn Chen is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Safety, Health and Environmental Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Previously, he has held the position as Chairman of the Department, Dean of College of Engineering and Vice President in the same university. He is also in charge of the Taiwan EPA Southern Environmental Incident Specialist Team, which provided emergency response services to southern Taiwan. He received MSc and PhD from Imperial College, London, UK, both in Chemical Engineering. He has 4 patents and authored more than 50 referred papers in international journals, all in the broad range of chemical process safety. He also participated in more than 100 chemical and gas emergency responses and incident investigations in Taiwan, including the catastrophic Kaohsiung pipeline explosion in 2014. His current research interests are gas safety, explosion suppression, ignition mechanism, and fundamental aspects of chemical safety.