• WPC 2024
  • March 18-22, 2024

Bob Maughon

SABIC

Executive Vice President, CTO and CSO

Bob Maughon is the SABIC EVP, Sustainability, Technology & Innovation and CTO & CSO. He oversees a global organization with 19 research centers and a talented team focused on process, product and application innovation to support SABIC’s growth. Additionally, Maughon has responsibility for Corporate Sustainability, Product Stewardship, Technology Licensing, Technology Ventures, and Chairs the ESG Steering Committee.

Prior to joining SABIC in 2019, Maughon completed a 21-year career with Dow, most recently serving the R&D vice president for Packaging & Specialty Plastics and Hydrocarbons.

Maughon serves as a member of the board for the PIF Saudi Investment Recycling Company, the University of Michigan Engineering Leadership Advisory Board, American Chemical Society Sustainable Development Advisory Council, Alliance to End Plastic Waste Board, AspenTech Executive Advisory Board, and Value Balancing Alliance Steering Committee.

Maughon was recently awarded the 2023 R&D100 Sustainability Innovator of the Year.

Maughon earned his BA degree in chemistry from Rice University and his PhD in organic chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. 

Sessions With Bob Maughon

Tuesday, 19 March

  • 08:00am - 09:30am (CST) / 19/mar/2024 01:00 pm - 19/mar/2024 02:30 pm

    Corporate View on Innovation and Emerging Technologies

    Technologies enabling the Energy Transition and Innovating for materials change

    8:00 AM: Welcome to Innovation and Emerging Technologies - Richard Charlesworth, Executive Director, Industry Processes and Cost Analytics, S&P Global Commodity Insights
    8:05 AM: Keynote - How SABIC is Embracing Innovation, Risk, and Collaboration to Deliver a Sustainable Future For our Customers and Value Chain  - Bob Maughon, EVP, CTO and CSO, SABIC

    The petrochemical sector is undergoing a significant transformation driven by factors such as (de-)globalization, China’s industry transformation, sustainability, the energy transition, and the emergence of disruptive exponential technologies. For ex., societal concern over plastic end-of-life and carbon emissions is placing unprecedented pressure on the sector from NGOs, governments/regulatory bodies, brands, retailers, and the consumers. The value plastics bring to many applications like packaging, PPE, hygiene and medical applications is clear and even reaffirmed during COVID-19, but this must be balanced with their environmental impact - circular and low-carbon solutions are essential to address these challenges. This requires a renewed focus on innovation, an openness to work together in new ways across the industry and the new evolving value chain, and a willingness to embrace risk in testing new technology solutions and business models; all of these in an industry that has seen limited disruption in core technologies and processes for decades. Although there are challenges, the opportunity here to innovate, collaborate, and transform the industry is enormous. SABIC efforts to deliver solutions to address the challenges here, key barriers, and the needs in science and technology, infrastructure, policy and finance to overcome these will be discussed. 
    8:25 AM: Unlocking Operational Excellence: AspenTech's APM Revolutionizing the Petrochemical Industry Through Predictive Analytics​ - Don Busiek, Strategic Business & Technology Leader, AspenTech

    Asset reliability, health, sustainability, and safety are paramount in daily petrochemical operations. Meeting productivity goals while curbing environmental impacts of the operation (whether GHG emissions, solid or liquid waste generation or personnel hazardous material exposure) is a priority for the chemical industry executives. High maintenance costs, unforeseen downtime, missed production targets, wasted raw materials or products, and environmental penalties result from lack of asset visibility and upkeep. As such, digital innovative solutions open new frontiers in asset maintenance maximizing availability and use while minimizing risk and downtime. These solutions ensure sustainable and resilient operations. AspenTech's Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions seamlessly integrate predictive analytics and IoT to monitor and protect asset reliability delivering concrete business value to the operations and decision makers.

    8:45 AM: Accelerating the Delivery of Industrial Decarbonization - Aniruddha Sharma, Chair and CEO, Carbon Clean

    9:05 AM: Q&A