Bangkok Club invites AIChE members to meetings

On October 2nd AIChE's executive director, John Sofranko held a reception for local AIChE members in Bangkok at the Sukhothai Hotel. An active AIChE Club, the Bangkok Club holds bi-monthly meetings with talks from visiting and area chemical engineers.

Club meetings bring together a diverse group of people, including expatriate engineers from India, the US and the UK There are two other professional engineering organizations in Thailand, The Engineering Institute of Thailand and the Thailand Institute of Chemical Engineers. These organizations conduct their meetings in Thai, which limit involvement by non-Thai-speaking engineers.

"An AIChE section in Thailand can form a link between the Thai engineers, expatriate engineers, and the international community for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and technology exchange," said Dan Brechko, vice chair of the Bangkok club.

"Our target is to have dinner talks bi-monthly with distinguished speakers from industry, government, or academia," continued Brechko. The dinner talk format is a new concept in Thai culture, but we have been successful so far with nearly 60 persons for our last dinner talk."

The club invites AIChE members and staff to speak at their meetings. "The topic can be technical or non-technical, said Pomthoong Malakul, club program director. "It is important that there is interaction, discussion, and exchanged ideas between people from two parts of the world."

Past meetings have included speakers from Unocal, the Thailand Productivity Institute, UOP, and Bayer Polymer (Thailand). The speaker at the November meeting will be member Michael Williams of the University of Alberta, a visiting professor at Kasetsart University.

The club encouraged AIChE members to contact them when visiting the area, so they can serve as hosts and extend an invitation to club meetings. Members planning a trip to Thailand and would like to contact the Bangkok Club should contact Stephanie Viola, local section staff associate, at localsections@aiche.org or (212) 591-7328.