The International Society of Automation (ISA) announces that it is accepting applications for its wide range of 2014 educational scholarships, which will be awarded to college and university students who demonstrate outstanding potential for long-range contributions in the fields of automation, instrumentation and control.

ISA educational scholarships, which fund tuition, related expenses and research initiatives, are distributed annually to undergraduate students in two-year and four-year colleges and universities, and to graduate students.

More than $65,000 in scholarships funds are expected to be distributed in 2014. The two top undergraduate winners will receive $5,000 each. Other award amounts will vary. For answers to frequently asked questions regarding ISA educational scholarships, click here.

Interested students are encouraged to apply as soon as possible by submitting a completed application form or by calling ISA at +1 919-549-8411. The application deadline is 15 February 2014.

ISA awards scholarships from the ISA Educational Foundation Scholarship fund; through the ISA Executive Board; through ISA technical divisions, sections and districts; and through endowments of generous gifts from supporters. More details on these various scholarships are included below.

Educational Foundation Scholarship
Recipients of awards are full-time college or university students in either a graduate, undergraduate, or two-year degree program with at least an overall GPA of 2.5 on a 4.0 scale. Students should be enrolled in a program in automation and control or a closely related field.

ISA Executive Board Scholarship
These funds are provided by past and present members of ISA's Executive Board. Preference is given to applicants with demonstrated leadership capabilities. Award amount varies.

Named Awards
Funds are provided by families or groups in honor of specific people.

ISA Technical Division Scholarships
Funds are provided by specific ISA divisions. Scholarships are given to outstanding students pursuing careers in the area pertinent to the Division’s activity. All ISA divisions, except the Chemical and Petroleum Industry Division (ChemPID) and the Food and Pharmaceutical Industries Division request that completed applications be sent to a specific person (identified on the ISA Technical Division Scholarships page).

ISA Section and District Scholarships
Funds are provided by specific ISA sections and districts.

For reference, view the entire list of 2013 Educational Foundation Scholarship recipients.

A new training laboratory at Russia’s Ufa State Petroleum Technological University (UGNTU) features the latest Honeywell equipment and computer modeling software to help train future oil and gas engineers. The equipment, provided by a grant from Honeywell, will be used for training process engineering students and students majoring in process automation and control, allowing them to computer model process facilities in the oil refining and petrochemical industries.

“Training future engineers in Russia is important for the future of the oil and gas industry, which is a primary source of Russia’s economic growth, and it is also an important focus for Honeywell,” said Leonid Sorkin, General Manager of Honeywell CJSC. “We work with several Russian technological universities to help ensure students have access to the latest process control tools.”

The university provides education for the entire range of oil and gas sector activities, from oil and gas exploration to refining. UGNTU has approximately 17,000 students from 56 subject entities of the Russian Federation and 36 former Soviet Union and other countries.

“It is widely known that UGNTU graduates work not only in Russia or Former Soviet Union countries, but also in every continent of the world. Working in close cooperation with such companies as Honeywell to train our students, allows them to be competitive and sought after in the global job market,” said Professor Mirat Khusniyarov, UGNTU Vice-Rector for Teaching. “To grow the skills of our industrial automation students, we decided, jointly with Honeywell, to set up a specialized laboratory on the UGNTU premises. We hope for further cooperation in building a full-scale training center, which will present not only software but also the entire range of the company’s hardware.”

Invensys, a leading supplier of state-of-the-art industrial software, systems and control equipment to the world’s major industries, has rendered a multi-year, multi-million dollar corporate license to SK innovation.

Under the terms of the agreement, SK innovation, including its subsidiaries, will use Invensys’ SimSci® ROMeo® software to optimize and improve the performance of its refining and petrochemical operations in real time. SK Energy, one of SK Innovation’s subsidiaries, is Korea's largest oil refiner with a capacity for 1.1 million barrels-per-day of crude distillation and operating approximately 4,200 service stations across the country. Additionally, SK Global Chemical, another of SK Innovation’s subsidiaries, produces 5.5 million tons of petrochemical and polyolefin products each year and is capable of producing 860,000 tons of ethylene per year.

“Invensys provides the true partnership we need as we execute our operational excellence program,” said Mr. Cheon, real-time optimization project manager at SK innovation. “This relationship and their SimSci solutions will allow us to apply new, consistent modeling techniques that should improve the real-time performance of our assets across the lifecycle of our refining and petrochemical operations.”

An integrated online and offline optimization solution for the refining, petrochemical and gas processing industries, SimSci ROMeo optimization software handles equipment monitoring, utilities optimization and material balance in open- or closed-loop mode.

“ROMeo software allows our customers to build upon and unite existing automation and IT systems with technology applications from Invensys, our ecosystem partners and other third-party providers so they function as one, holistic, real-time business optimization solution,” said Ravi Gopinath, president of Invensys’ software business. “This agreement allows us to help SK innovation achieve real-time operational excellence, as well as create more value and contribute to the wellbeing of their customers and other stakeholders.”

ISA-100.11a-2011, "Wireless Systems for Industrial Automation: Process Control and Related Applications," has received approval from all 21 participating National Committees of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) that voted on the IEC version in a recently completed Committee Draft for Vote (CDV) stage.

The CDV stage is the final stage in the IEC process in which technical comments may be considered. The standard, expected to be issued in early 2014 for a final IEC approval stage in which no technical comments may be submitted, will carry the designation IEC 62734 upon publication.  This follows previous approval of ISA-100.11a as an ISA and American National Standard. The latter confirmed that ISA’s open consensus standards development procedures as accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which require participation not only of suppliers but of all key interest categories, were followed properly in developing ISA-100.11a.

Notably, ISA’s ANSI-accredited procedures provide for direct participation and voting by experts from end-user companies, ensuring consideration of the views and requirements of those who will actually be deploying wireless systems in real-world industrial applications. That end-user input is now evident in the growing worldwide application of ISA-100.11a technology in processes including oil and gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG), refining, petrochemicals, chemicals, power, biopharmaceuticals, thermal processing and water treatment.

In a presentation at the 2013 ARC Forum, for example, C. B. Chakradhaar of RasGas described the highly cost-effective application of ISA-100.11a-compliant wireless temperature transmitters to monitor a critical component in LNG production. Based on that success, he indicated, ISA-100.11a has been adopted as a plant-wide standard for all future wireless applications.

To read about other real-world applications of ISA-100.11a, visit: www.ISA100Wirelessapplications/successes.com