Madison, WisconsinㅡMarch 6, 2024ㅡDr. Kelly Senecal, Co-Founder of Convergent Science, has been elected a Fellow of The Combustion Institute. This honorific recognizes members of the international combustion community for their outstanding contributions to combustion, in research or in applications. Senecal was elected for his significant contributions to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of internal combustion engines and reacting flows by developing the CONVERGE software.

"I am honored to be recognized by such a prestigious organization," said Senecal. "Combustion is a fundamental process that underlies much of the technology that has powered—and will continue to power—our world. I have dedicated my career to developing tools that help us better understand the combustion process and enable us to investigate new methods and fuels to create the sustainable combustion technologies of the future. It is very rewarding to see that this work is making a difference in the combustion community."

Senecal is a co-founder and owner of Convergent Science and one of the original developers of CONVERGE, which is used around the world to simulate internal combustion engines and reacting flows, among many other applications. In addition, he is a visiting professor at the University of Oxford and the director and co-founder of the Computational Chemistry Consortium (C3). C3 brings together industry, academic, and government partners to refine existing computational chemistry tools and to develop new models, tools, and mechanisms. In 2021, C3 released a first-of-its-kind, publicly available detailed chemical kinetic mechanism for surrogate fuels. This mechanism is providing researchers unprecedented insight into the combustion characteristics of both conventional and alternative fuels.

An internationally recognized expert on propulsion technology, Senecal is an advocate for embracing a pragmatic approach to transportation decarbonization. He has given invited talks around the globe to educate students, engineers, and policymakers alike on how we can reach a sustainable transportation future. Senecal co-authored a book on the topic titled Racing Toward Zero: The Untold Story of Driving Green, which won the 2022 Independent Press Award for Environment.

Senecal is also a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He is the current chair of the executive committee of the ASME Internal Combustion Engine Division, a member of the board of advisors for the Central States Section of the Combustion Institute, and the 2019 recipient of the ASME ICE Award.