Implementing custom machine learning and data driven solutions for IFF North America sites

● Executed technical track for various experimental programsincluding: creation of KPIs, scale-up from lab to operational, andvalidation of experimental results. Received 2018 South AfricanInstitute of Chemical Engineering Innovation Award.● Devised and maintained VBA tool to interact with SAP Portalwhich directly interfaced with HTML to automate the download,aggregation, and statistical analyses of laboratory sample results.Savings estimated at 5% of weekly hours for 60 engineers. Modified existing experimental plans to improve prediction accuracy of real-world versus lab-scale reactions, modelled and analyzed predictions under various scenarios of operational changes, and implemented and oversaw test-runs based on lab findings to improve process operations.

● Designed an inferred process (distillation) control scheme whichallowed optimization of product purity on-the-fly withoutrequiring lab or expensive in-line analyses.● Created and maintained VBA model of a complex chemical reactorsystem, including programming a solver for Ordinary DifferentialEquations. Developed experimental plan to validate the model anddrove communication and implementation of learnings.

● Improvements on reactor technology in the chemicals environment.● Responsible for P&ID review and HAZOP studies for new designs.Created kinetic reactor models for fixed bed hydrogenation reactor and homogeneous liquid phase hydroformylation reactors.● Long term improvement of operating philosophies and start-up plans for reactors based on theoretical studies and test runs.

● Built automated dashboards for daily, weekly and monthlymanagement reporting; including automatic printing, collation ofmultiple spreadsheets, identification of outlier values and earlywarning for worrying trends.● Monitoring and process improvements on two hydroformylation and hydrogenation reactor based plants.● Involved significant exposure to vacuum distillation, partitioned distillation, and stripping columns.● 9 months as team lead - leading a team of 10 process engineers responsible for daily monitoring and improvement of plant performance.