1970s Honorees
The inaugural class of Academy honorees includes 71 Texas ChE alumni, all of whom have been recognized as Distinguished Engineering Graduates by the Cockrell School of Engineering. Honorees are organized by decade of their earliest graduation year, then alphabetically by last name. (*deceased)
1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
Robert A. Brown (B.S. ’73)
Robert A. Brown, a distinguished chemical engineer, became president of Boston University in September 2005.
A Texas native, Dr. Brown earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota, where he worked under the guidance of Professor L.E. Scriven. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences, among other professional societies.
At Boston University, Dr. Brown has emphasized strengthening the core missions of undergraduate, graduate and professional education, interdisciplinary work, and research and scholarship across all sixteen schools and colleges. He initiated an eighteen-month planning process that culminated in a ten-year strategic plan, Choosing to be Great. Under Brown’s leadership, Boston University was invited in 2012 to join the Association of American Universities (AAU), the organization of the 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada.
Dr. Brown has worked to underscore the central importance of the teaching and research functions of the University, with particular emphasis on efforts to increase opportunities for interdisciplinary study by students from all of the University’s undergraduate schools and colleges. He is actively engaged in both the public and private sectors. He currently serves as a trustee of the University Research Association, a member of the Council on Competitiveness, and a director of the DuPont Company. From 2006 through 2008, he served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), for the President of the United States. Also, in 2008 Dr. Brown was named one of the top 100 Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Dr. Brown is chairman of the Academic Research Council of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Singapore, a key funding body for academic research in that country. In Singapore, he also serves on the Research Innovation and Enterprise Council chaired by the Prime Minister. In recognition of his extraordinary contributions to higher education in Singapore, Dr. Brown was named an honorary citizen in January 2006. This award is the highest form of recognition given by the Singapore government to any non-Singaporean.
Prior to his appointment at Boston University, Dr. Brown was provost and Warren K. Lewis Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the MIT faculty in 1979, beginning a distinguished career in education and research. He has published more than 250 papers in areas related to mathematical modeling of transport phenomena in materials and served as executive editor of the Journal of Chemical Engineering Science from 1991 to 2004. In his twenty-five years at MIT, he held a number of leadership positions, including head of the Department of Chemical Engineering and dean of the School of Engineering. He became provost there in 1998.
Janet H. Lowe (B.S. ’79)
Engineer-turned-entrepreneur Janet H. Lowe is co-founder and principal of LTI LLC, a consulting company.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin in 1979, Lowe joined Shell as a process engineer.
Seeking business skills to facilitate her entrepreneurial ambitions, Lowe left industry to earn her MBA from Rice University in 1988 and then accepted management and executive positions in marketing, sales, finance and strategy at Sterling Partners, Compaq and WilTel Communications. She eventually co-founded CPLEX Optimization, a software startup.
Lowe and her team grew CPLEX steadily, displacing IBM and all other competitors to become the leader in high-performance mathematical programming. After 10 successive years of high growth and profitability, she negotiated and executed the sale of CPLEX to ILOG SA, a Paris-based publicly traded corporation. For founding CPLEX, and for its contributions to industry, Lowe received the first-ever Impact Prize from The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. Lowe also co-founded and sold another startup, Compass Solutions, in 1999.
Lowe remained at ILOG SA as vice president of strategy and mergers and acquisitions, acquiring technology companies. In 2007, she negotiated and executed the sale of ILOG SA to IBM. She stayed at IBM as an executive, managing large and complex integration projects until 2010. That year, Lowe left IBM and joined her husband, Todd, in their latest business, LTI LLC, where they manage private investments and provide strategic consulting services.
Lowe serves on the Board of Trustees for Sierra Nevada College and the Sage Ridge School. She is a member of Sierra Angels and supports local young entrepreneurs as an investor, mentor and judge for business plan competitions.
Lowe and her husband live in the home they built on the shore of Lake Tahoe, where they raised twin daughters who are now freshmen in college. Lowe is a helicopter pilot who also skis, sails and hikes. Last year, she completed the 170-mile Tahoe Rim Trail and summited Mount Kilimanjaro.
Dana D. Sellers (B.S. ’75)
Dana Sellers is the CEO of Encore Health Resources, one of the fastest-growing consulting firms in the health care technology industry and one of Modern Healthcare magazine’s “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” for three years running.
Sellers has more than 25 years of experience in health care, technology and consulting. Under her leadership, Encore’s annual revenue growth has averaged more than 200 percent since the company’s founding.
Before founding Encore in 2009, Sellers was president and COO of Healthlink, then the nation’s largest privately held health care information systems consulting firm. After IBM acquired Healthlink in 2005, Sellers served as a partner in IBM’s Global Business Services and leader for the U.S. Healthcare Provider team. Sellers’ career has also included leadership roles at DuPont and Trinity Computing Systems, which she co-founded.
Sellers is a member of the Texas Health Institute’s Board of Trustees and has also served as interim CIO for The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and for INTEGRIS Health. In addition, Sellers sits on the boards of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), the CHIME Foundation and the CHIME Education Foundation. She is a past chair of the board of Healthcare for the Homeless in Houston, her hometown.
Sellers, her husband Gene (B.A. ’74, J.D.’77), and their sons Lamar (B.A. ‘07, J.D. ’11) and Baine (B.A. ’09) are all UT Austin alumni.