ISA elevates four members to Fellow, announces 2024 Society Leadership

January 15, 2024

Non-profit professional association International Society of Automation (ISA) announced that the four individuals were elevated to the distinguished grade of ISA Fellow in 2024. The esteemed Fellow member grade is one of ISA’s highest honors, recognizing only those senior members who have made important contributions to the automation profession, in practice, in academia. It also announced its Society leadership for the term beginning Jan. 1, 2024.

“ISA is pleased to honor these distinguished achievers who have made exceptional contributions that have positively impacted the automation industry”, Prabhu Soundarrajan, ISA president, said in a press statement. “We appreciate those that submitted nominations and congratulate those who are being elevated to Fellow. It is my honor to recognize them.”

The elevated members include Dr. Soloman Moses Almadi from Saudi Aramco, Jonas Berge from Emerson, Deji Chen from Wuxi University, and Kevin L. Klein from Chevron. Almadi was recognized for inventing, developing, field proving, and commercializing new technology, Intelligent Integrated Node (IIN) that reduces equipment automation infrastructure from five different vendor devices down to one fault-tolerant device. Berge’s patents, developed in collaboration with a team, are recognized for their contribution to the digital transformation of industrial automation controls. Notably, these patents feature a ‘revolutionary’ fieldbus safety system.

Chen was elevated for his ongoing international contributions to IIoT, contributing to WirelessHART, OPC, IEC30141 and IEC30165, and Chinese standards GB/T 38624.1-2020, GB/T 38619-2020, and GB/T 38637.1-2020. Lastly, Klein was promoted for outstanding and significant contributions to the process industries in the areas of safety instrumented systems (SIS) design, operations, maintenance, functional safety, and process safety.

Members of the Executive Board of Society leadership include president: Prabhu Soundarrajan, Service by Medallion; president-elect secretary: Scott Reynolds, Johns Manville; past president: Marty Bince at EECOL Electric; treasurer: Ardis Bartle of Apex Measurement and Controls; executive director: Claire Fallon at ISA; Soliman Almadi of Saudi Aramco; Dean Bickerton of The Reynolds Company; Francisco Diaz-Andreu of Repsol-ISA, Nick Erickson of AWC; Colleen Goldsborough of United Electric Supply; Vivek Gupta of DCM Shriram; Eddie Habibi of Zenzero Investments; Shank Iyer of Amazon Web Services; Maxym Lachance of BBA; Carlos Mandolesi of Trinity College Dublin; Edward Naranjo of Honeywell International; Megan Samford of Schneider Electric; Jagdish Shukla of Servilink Systems; Sujata Tilak of Ascent Intellimation; and Jeff Winter of Hitachi Solutions.

These individuals have demonstrated their strong commitment to ISA and visioning the role that the Society plays in the future of the automation community.

“I am honored to welcome this new slate of exceptional professionals to ISA leadership,” Soundarrajan said in a media statement. “International is the first word in our Society’s name, and I am delighted to see such a diverse group represented here, representing six countries and with a wide array of experience across ISA and the industry sectors our Society serves.”

In October, the ISA ISA99 committee gave its stamp of approval to the Micro-Learning Module (MLM) 38A titled ‘Identifying Control System Cyber Incidents,’ following a rigorous peer-review process. The ISA99 work product can help organizations meet their cyber incident reporting requirements. By identifying control system cyber incidents, OT (operational technology), IT, and engineers could become more aware of risk and be better enabled to take appropriate prevention measures leading to a more holistic approach to cyber security.