EPSC yearly honors a person that has made extraordinary contributions in the field of technical chemical safety. The EPSC Award aims to put a spotlight on outstanding scientific, and technical work that has an impact and gets applied in our member companies.

EPSC Award 2023

The 2023 EPSC Award was handed over to Delphine Laboureur by EPSC Board Member Dirk Roosendans during the 3rd European Conference on Plant & Process Safety in Maastricht.

Delphine is a researcher and professor at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, working in the area of process safety since many years. With this award, EPSC is promoting diversity and encouraging women to pursue a career in process safety.

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EPSC Award 2022

The award for 2022 was given to Simon-Mark Egan of Solvay during the EPSC Technical Meeting on 12 April 2022 in Berlin.

Simon was elected for the award by the EPSC Board for his over 40 years career dedication to process safety, continuously improving understanding of hazards as well as improving design and operational practices. Further Simon developed and provided several process safety training programs that helped to create fundamental understanding on the topics within and outside Solvay.

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EPSC Award 2021

The award for 2021 was handed over to Dr. Thierry Poinsot by the EPSC Chair Pol Hoorelbeke during the EPSC European Conference on Plant & Process Safety in Antwerp on 13 September 2022. Here Thierry presented about combustion hazards including the options to simulate these. His presentation "Can we simulate safety scenarios linked to combustion?" can be found here.
Thierry has a long lasting career in combustion research, coaching companies and educating students. The many highlights of his career are summarized on his Wikipedia page.

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EPSC Award 2020

Professor Dr. Francis Stoessel received the EPSC Award 2020 safely from EPSC Board Member Margit Hahn during the (virtual) Technical Meeting in October 2020. The award was presented to him as a symbol of EPSC Board’s recognition, and appreciation of a life-long career of outstanding contributions to comprehensive process safety risk analyses, and thermal, and chemical process safety analyses, and solutions that are being applied by EPSC members. More ...

His presentation given on "Thermal Process Safety / Criticality classes as a tool for assessment and design" on 6 October can be found here.

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EPSC Award 2019

The 2019 Award Ceremony at the LP2019 conference: the prestigious EPSC Award was given by Pol Hoorelbeke to Kees van Wingerden (left), who received the Award for his long lasting technical contributions in the field of Process Safety.

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EPSC Award 2018

The 2018 EPSC Process Safety Award was presented during ACHEMA to Dr. Hans-Peter Schildberg of BASF SE, for his outstanding work on detonation resistant process design.

His presentation given at ACHEMA on "Gas Phase Detonations: Effective Pressures Acting on the Walls of the Enclosures and Probability of Deflagration-to-Detonation Transition in Pipes, Vessels and Packings" can be found here.

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Dr. Hans-Peter Schildberg (right) receiving the award from Piet Knijff, chair of the EPSC Board.


EPSC Award 2015

At the autumn meeting of the EPSC Technical Steering Committee, the EPSC Award for 2015 was presented to former EPSC technical director, Richard Gowland in recognition of his extraordinary lifelong contribution to the field of process safety.

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Richard has had a long and varied career in process safety, including 30 years at the Dow Chemical Company, independent work as specialist in safety instrumented systems, and risk and hazard analysis. He has shown his merit in everything from training courses to major incident investigations.

Following the oil depot fire at Buncefield in 2005 he was invited by HSE, the UK regulator, to chair a group which published guidance on LOPA for fuel storage sites. This work significantly advanced the use of LOPA methods in practice.

Since retiring from EPSC last year Richard continues to be active in process safety and remains as the Course Director for delivery of the IChemE LOPA training for both its in-company and public courses.

For these achievements, and many others great and small, EPSC has chosen to recognise Richard Gowland's unique influence in improving the theory and practice of process safety. The EPSC award celebrates and highlights the achievements of those who work towards a safer Europe.

EPSC Awards 1998 - 2014

EPSC Learning Sheet

The Learning Sheets are meant to stimulate discussion on important process safety topics at operational sites and to improve competency & awareness. Latest topic: Explosion in a Batch Reactor. Subscribe to our Learning Sheet Mailing List here.