RESEARCH PROGRAM ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN PROCESS ENGINEERING.

The author shows that artificial intelligence is expanding the scope of our problems and is enriching our capabilities to deliver viable solutions to otherwise hard and resistant problems. At the same time it is introducing new educational challenges that the research program at the MIT-LISPE is attempting to address and which are related to the computer-aided character of chemical process engineering, the rationalization of the man-machine interaction, and the role of fundamental science in engineering. A discussion is presented of the MIT-LISPE (Laboratory for Intelligent System for Process Engineering); hardware facilities and software support; and research projects and the new prototype of an intelligent system.