Ignacio E. Grossmann is the R. R. Dean University Professor of Chemical Engineering, at Carnegie Mellon University. He obtained his B.S. degree at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, in 1974, and his M.S. and Ph.D. at Imperial College in 1975 and 1977, respectively. After working at the Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo in Mexico City in 1978, he joined Carnegie Mellon in 1979. He is a former Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon (1994-2002), and a member and director of the "Center for Advanced Process Decision-making," an industrial consortium that involves about 20 petroleum, chemical, engineering and software companies.

Professor Grossmann was Chair of the Computers and Systems Technology Division of AIChE, and co-chair of the 1989 Foundations of Computer-Aided Process Design Conference and 2003 Foundations of Computer-Aided Process Operations Conference. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering in the United States and member of the Academia de Ingeniería in Mexico. He is a Fellow of INFORMS and AIChE, His major awards include the 1994 Computing in Chemical Engineering Award of the CAST Division of AIChE, the 1997 William H. Walker Award of AIChE, the 2000 Steven J. Fenves Award for Systems Research, the 2003 Computing Society Prize of INFORMS, the 2007 Kun Li Award for Excellence in Education at Carnegie Mellon, the 2009 Warren Lewis Award of AIChE, the 2011 Research Excellence in Sustainable Engineering Award of AIChE, the 2019 Founders Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Chemical Engineering, and and the 2024 John M. Prausnitz AIChE Institute Lecturer. In 2015 he was the first recipient of the Sargent Medal by the Institution of Chemical Engineers. He also received in 2017 the ETH Zürich Chemical Engineering Medal, and Award for Long Term Achievements in Computer Aided Process Engineering by the Working Party on CAPE of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering. He was named “One of the Hundred Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era” by AIChE in 2008, a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in 2014-2016, and a 2019 Top Cited Scientist in Computer Science and Electronics: 53 Worldwide, 38 National. He has honorary doctorates from Abo Akademi in Finland, University of Maribor in Slovenia, Technical University of Dortmund in Germany, University of Cantabria in Spain, Russian Kazan National Research Technological University, Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Argentina, Universidad de Alicante in Spain, RWTH Aachen University in Germany, and Universidad Nacional del Sur in Argentina.

The research interests of Professor Grossmann are in the areas of mixed-integer, disjunctive and stochastic programming, global optimization, synthesis of chemical processes, design of energy systems including petroleum, shale gas and biofuels, power systems, water networks, and optimal planning and scheduling for enterprise-wide optimization. He has authored more than 700 papers, which have been highly cited. He has also produced several monographs on design cases studies, the textbook "Systematic Methods of Chemical Process Design," which he co-authored with Larry Biegler and Art Westerberg, and the recent textbook "Advanced Optimization in Process Systems Engineering,". He has also organized the Virtual Library on Process Systems Engineering. Professor Grossmann has graduated 68 Ph.D. and 37 M.S. students. His former students have been placed in a number of major companies in the chemical and petrochemical industry, as well as in a number of major universities in the United States and other parts of the world.