Bethel, Conn. — The Society of Plastics Engineers is giving its top honor, the International Award, to Samuel Kenig, dean of engineering and head of graduate studies in plastics engineering at Shenkar College in Israel.
SPE announced its slate of annual awards to honor Kenig and three other distinguished individuals at an awards gala that will take place May 22, the Sunday night before Antec begins at the JW Marriott Indianapolis.
The other award winners are:
Frank Macher, an automotive plastics expert and chairman and CEO of Continental Structural Plastics Inc., won the Business Management Award.
Tim Osswald, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Polymer Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin, picked up the Fred E. Schwab Education Award. Osswald is a native of Colombia, and has a highly globalist perspective as an expert on polymer processing.
Gregory Campbell won the Research/Engineering Technology Award. He was a senior researcher at General Motors Corp. who, during a 13-year career there, worked on key research programs related to more usage of plastics in cars, and moved to academia to become a chemical engineering faculty member at Clarkson University.
SPE's Antec runs May 23-25.
SPE, based in Bethel, Conn., announced the Antec winners on April 5. SPE gave out more information on each one:
Samuel Kenig, in his PhD research from 1968 through 1972, was the first to study, model and simulate the complete injection molding process, according to SPE. His thesis inspired many commercial simulation software packages for injection molding.
Before joining academia, Kenig held several industrial research and development positions. In 1974, he joined the Research Authority of the Israel Ministry of Defense, and rose to become managing director of the Materials and Processes division from 1986-1991.
He established, in 1992, the Israel Plastics & Rubber Center (IPRC) Ltd., aimed at advancing the technical and scientific infrastructure of the rubber and plastics industries. He served as its managing director until May 2014. Concurrent with his industrial work, Kenig was involved with academic affairs for more than 30 years.
Kenig became a full professor in 2000, and was named deal of engineering faculty in 2007. In 2009, he established the Department of Plastics Engineering at Shenkar College, and was appointed the department head. Since its inception, the college has graduated more than 450 students with a bachelor's degree in plastics engineering.
In 2010, Kenig established a joint PhD program in plastics engineering with the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
His R&D work has focused on nanocomposites since 2000, leading to four patents and numerous technical publications. The Italian company Nanto Ltd. commercialized the patents to develop corrosion resistant paints containing nanoclays; they are sold under the trade name Nanto Protective Paints. Nanto also has come out with fire-retardant polymers based on nanoclays, SPE reports.
A member of SPE since 1969, Kenig has written more than 150 papers and has delivered more than 120 lectures around the world. He has 16 patents.