Philadelphia — Tim Osswald and the late Mike Sepe were honored with symposiums at the recent Antec 2025 conference.
Each symposium included several presentations on topics where Osswald and Sepe focused their work. Antec is hosted by the Society of Plastics Engineers. This year's event was held in Philadelphia from March 4-6.
Osswald is a professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he co-directed the Polymer Engineering Center. He's currently general manager of AFLATEX Technologies in Lisbon, Portugal.
Originally from Colombia, Osswald holds degrees from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also studied at the Institute for Plastics Processing (IKV) in Aachen, Germany, as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. His honors include the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award and the 2001 VDI-K Dr--Richard-Escales-Preis.
In 2006 Osswald was named an honorary professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and in 2011 was named honorary professor at the National University of Colombia. His research includes modeling and simulation in polymer processing, engineering design with plastic and composite materials, and sustainability in plastics manufacturing. Osswald has published more than 300 peer-reviewed conference and journal articles as well as 15 books translated in five languages.
Sepe was an industry consultant and a longtime contributor of materials know-how columns to Plastics Technology magazine. He died in April 2024 from a sudden illness at age 71.
Sepe started his plastics career at Stelle Plastics in 1975. There he gained hands-on experience with injection molding, which led to a nearly 50 year career in the industry.
After Stelle, Sepe became technical director of Dickten and Masch, where he established the company's first analytical lab. In 2006, he started an independent plastics consulting business.
Sepe presented more than 25 Antec papers and wrote a book on dynamic mechanical analysis. In 2015, he joined the American Injection Molding Institute as an instructor.
At the conference, Sepe's longtime friend Al McGovern said Sepe "could make plastics problem solving understood by anyone."
"You could call him anytime and he could talk to anyone and make it clear," McGovern said.
McGovern's engineering career included more than 10 years with electronics maker Shure Inc. Sepe worked on several projects for Shure.
"With Mike, there were no boat anchors, no molds that you built that didn't work," McGovern said. "Mike was part of that effort."