Message from the Chair: Driving the Filtration Industry Forward with Knowledge Sharing
Guest blog from Jeni Wong, Chair of AFS. Jeni assumed the role of Chair last month and will serve in this position until September 2022. She has been an active AFS member since 2014, serving as Co-Chair of the 2017 Spring Conference and as a Board member since 2018. She also is active in ASHRAE, serving on the Technical Committee (TC 2.4) as the Membership Chair since 2017 and Voting Member since 2019.
As I move into the Chair role for AFS, I cannot help but reflect on how much has changed since I first joined in 2014. At that time, I was new to the filtration industry and looking to bolster my knowledge base in every way possible. I had met Rahul Bharadwaj (former Chair of AFS and current Senior Applications Engineering Manager at Lydall) and, though we both participate in other industry organizations and committees, he could not stop singing the praises of one in particular – AFS. His excitement for the important work that was being done was contagious, and I quickly became more and more involved myself. I realized that AFS was different because of the exceptional dedication of volunteers to not only furthering their own professional interests but also to truly building a better industry together.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a lot of changes, that desire to work together for a better world has not been one of them. As outgoing Chair Shagufta Patel mentioned in her farewell address last month, we’ve had to find new ways to engage members and to remain a leading resource for distributing technical knowledge and education, and we will continue to focus on these efforts to bring value to our members and to the filtration and separation market.
In January of this year, AFS launched the AFS Learning Center, which allows people to access on-demand courses from anywhere in the world and at any time that is convenient for them. Courses range from beginner level (to provide a foundation of knowledge for new employees or a refresh for more seasoned professionals) to expert level (to dive deeper into niche topics for established professionals). New courses are initially offered in real time and then added to the AFS Learning Center library to be taken at any time after that on-demand. I encourage everyone reading this to check out the AFS Learning Center for these courses, previous conference proceedings, past issues of Fluid Particle Separation Journal and One Minute Filtration Articles. Although the AFS Learning Center is available to anyone, AFS members receive a discount to this powerful new platform, which you can access here.
I am greatly looking forward to the year ahead and playing a significant role in furthering the goals of AFS. A big thank you to the AFS Executive Committee, Board of Directors, committees, volunteers, and our executive staff for making AFS such an active, valuable and influential organization supporting filtration and separations professionals and their innovations. Together we are empowering our members to network and exchange the technical knowledge necessary to drive the industry forward.