SPE to honor nine new fellows at Antec 2018

Bethel, Conn. — The Society of Plastics Engineers named nine new fellows who will be honored at SPE's Antec 2018 conference in Orlando, Fla., May 7-10. Antec runs during NPE2018.

The SPE fellow designation recognizes members for outstanding contributions in plastics engineering, science or technology, or in management of those activities. Candidates are sponsored by an SPE division or special interested group, and elected by the Fellows Election Committee, based on their professional record and written sponsorships from at least two SPE members.

Bethel-based SPE said 334 members of the society have been awarded the title of fellow since it started in 1984. New fellows are:

Ashok M. Adur, commercial development director for plastics at Vertellus Inc. in Parsippany, N.J. He was sponsored by the Polymer Modifiers & Additives division. Adur earned a doctorate in polymer science and engineering from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and executive entrepreneurship from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Adur has more than 40 years of experience in technical and commercial management at Chemplex Co., Air Products & Chemicals, BP Chemicals, International Paper, PolyOne and Crane Plastics, as well as his own consulting business. Adur has delivered more than 85 papers and publications and has more than 70 patents.

Carol Forance Barry, who teaches at the plastics engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. She was sponsored by the Injection Molding division. Before joining the university, Barry spent 12 years in industry. From 2004-2016 she was associate director of the Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. She has written more than 100 publications.

Mehmet Demirors, senior research fellow at Dow Chemical Co., working in packaging and specialty plastics research and development. The Engineering Properties & Structural division sponsored Demirors. At Dow, his primary responsibility is developing new products, mainly in polyethylene polymers, such as Elite AT, Agility, Innate and Dowlex GM.

Demirors started working at Dow after earning degrees in polymer science from the University of Manchester. In the early part of his career, in the Netherlands, he developed high-performance styrenics, including carbon dioxide-blown Styrofoam insulation materials. He moved to Texas, where he developed the Styron A-Tech family of products.

Dan Falla, senior technical service specialist at Shell Polymers, has spent more than 30 years in the polymer industry. He was sponsored by the Flexible Packaging division, where he currently serves as membership chair and councilor. Previous employers included Nova Chemicals and Dow, focusing on specialty packaging and new business development.

Falla has a degree in chemistry from McMaster University and a business degree from the University of Windsor. He has earned more than 20 patents, written more than 25 peer-reviewed articles, and given presentations at numerous conferences and webinars.

John W. Gillespie Jr., director of the University of Delaware's Center for Composite Materials. The SPE Composites division sponsored Gillespie. He is the Donald C. Phillips Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the university. He has advised more than 90 students pursuing advanced degrees.

Tie Lan is using his plastics expertise to serve as R&D manager at Vestergaard, a global health company working to fight malaria, HIV/AIDS and to enhance food security with post-harvest grain protection. He was sponsored by SPE's Properties & Structure division, and he also serves on the board of the Polymer Modifiers & Additives division.

Before joining Vestergaard, Lan worked as general manager and technical director at Nanocor Inc., where he pioneered the development and commercialization of nanoclay technology, with more than 40 patents. He earned a doctorate in chemistry from Michigan State University.

Russell Speight joined Moldflow Corp. in Australia in 1995 and is currently director of Moldflow Engineering, managing a global engineering team. Speight was sponsored by SPE's Australia-New Zealand Section, where he is vice president, and has previously held the position of councilor for six years.

Speight earned a doctorate in 1993 from the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom and an MBA in 2018 from Deakin University in Australia.

Uttandaraman Sundararaj teaches chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Calgary. Previously, he was a professor at the University of Alberta and worked with GE Plastics. Sundararaj was sponsored by the Applied Rheology division.

He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Alberta in 1989 and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota in 1994. His main research interests are polymer blend and nanocomposite structure generation, modeling of polymer processes and hybrid polymer nanocomposites using novel custom-synthesized nanomaterials. He has published more than 200 publications and holds several patents.

Michael Thompson, professor of chemical engineering and associate dean at McMaster University. The SPE Extrusion division sponsored Thompson. He has spent his career helping develop new materials and processes, mainly with extrusion technology.

Before joining the university, Thompson worked as a senior process engineer at Davis-Standard Corp. He joined SPE as a student member in 1993, and has presented or moderated at most Antecs in the past 25 years.