Dr. Tom Rehm often refers to himself as a farm boy, having grown up on a cattle and soy bean farm near Petit Jean Mountain. His father put him to work on the farm at age 11, and at around the age of 14, Tom’s father said he wanted to leave the farm to Tom, at which point Tom buckled down on his studies; he had had enough of farming. After a couple of years at Arkansas Tech, Tom transferred to Fayetteville where he completed his BSChE. After school, Tom joined UOP, and over the next nine years, Tom was involved in process and project design of 13 refining and petrochemical processes. In 1978, Tom decided that a MSChE might afford more interesting work, so he began part-time studies at Northwestern which eventually led to Tom completing his PhD in 1985.

After graduate school, Tom worked as a Research Engineer at the Amoco (now BP) Research Center developing one patent while there. In 1992, Tom joined a small consulting firm in Kingwood, TX whose clients were primarily law firms working the defense side of litigation in industrial accidents. In 1997, Tom joined Saudi Aramco to help them improve their investigations, and in the process of doing so, Tom helped form the steering committee for introduction of Process Safety Management at Saudi Aramco, with Tom leading the development of their Incident Reporting and Investigation Element. Tom worked several major investigations at Saudi Aramco before his retirement in 2009.  In retirement, he consults in process safety, principally PHA facilitation and PSM/RMP audits.

In addition to serving as a Director of the Safety & Health Division, Tom has been an officer of the AIChE South Texas Section, serving in 2019 as Chair. In late 2018, Tom and three colleagues submitted a proposal to the AIChE Board of Directors regarding formation of a multi-disciplinary climate solutions initiative to be led by the AIChE which was launched at the AIChE 2019 Spring Meeting. Tom serves as Chair of the Steering Committee for AIChE’s Climate Solutions Community which is on a path to be operational by mid-2020. Tom also serves as Chair of Climate Solutions for Texas, which is a local initiative of The Climate Solutions Community.

Arkansas Academy of Chemical Engineers, 2020