Shacham, Mordechai 1942-

PERSONAL:

Born February 10, 1942 in Debrecen, Hungary; immigrated to Israel, 1957; son of Zoltan and Erzsebet Schwarczkopf; married Michal Givoni, September 14, 1962; children: Orit, Efrat (Pais), Ilan, Noga. Education: Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, B.Sc. (cum laude), 1969, D.Sc., 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Beer-Sheva, Israel. Office—Department of Chemical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel; fax: 972-8-647-2916. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, teaching instructor, 1971-73; Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, lecturer, 1974-77, senior lecturer, 1977-83, associate professor, 1983-89, professor, 1989—, department head, 1985-89, 1993-97. University of Connecticut, research associate and associate professor in residence, 1979-81, visiting professor, 1993; University of Michigan, visiting professor, 1990, 1992-93; University of Houston, postdoctoral fellow, 1973-74.

MEMBER:

American Institute of Chemical Engineers, American Society for Engineering Education, Israeli Institute of Chemical Engineers (president, 1990-92; honorary fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS:

CACHE Award for excellence in computing in chemical engineering education, Chemical Engineering Section, American Society for Engineering Education, 2000.

WRITINGS:

(With Michael B. Cutlip) Problem Solving in Chemical Engineering with Numerical Methods, Prentice Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1999, revised edition published as Problem Solving in Chemical Engineering and Biochemical Engineering with Polymath, Excel, and MATLAB, 2006.

Contributor to numerous books, including Computer Applications to Chemical Engineering, edited by R. Squires and G.V. Reklaitis, American Chemical Society (Washington, DC), 1980; Modeling and Simulation in Engineering, Volume 3, edited by W.F. Ames and R. Vichnevetsky, Elsevier (New York, NY), 1983; Computers in Chemical Engineering Education, edited by B. Carnahan, CACHE Corp. (Austin, TX), 1996; and Lecture Series on Computer and Computational Sciences, edited by T. Simos and G. Maroulis, VSP International Science Publishers, 2004. Contributor to periodicals, including Chemical Engineering Science, Process Technology International, Technology International, Computer Journal, Advances in Chemical Engineering, Computers Chemical Engineering, Microprocessors and Microsystems, Computers and Education, Corrosion Reviews, and Chemical Engineering and Processing.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mordechai Shacham once told CA: "In 1984, my friend Michael Cutlip and I published the first release of a computer program whose purpose was to help engineers and scientists carry out simple and complicated calculations while interacting with the computer. Using this program the engineer's responsibility is to describe the calculations he wants to carry out in mathematical terms, and the tedious and boring details of the calculations are carried out tirelessly, reliably, and accurately by the computer.

"Our book complements the software by demonstrating the use of modern design techniques in various areas that chemical engineers deal with. The first edition, which was published in 1999, represented the culmination of almost thirty years of effort to bring the design techniques up to date with the state of the art computational tools. This goal, however, is a "moving target." In order to realize the most benefits from computer use, engineering design techniques must also continue to evolve. Because of that my coauthor and I continued to update both the software and the book."