LOUISVILLE, Ky.—The ACS Rubber Division, aside from its Charles Goodyear Medalist, also named the winners of its five other major awards during the first day of its International Elastomer Conference in Louisville, including two recipients from the same German university.
The winners, who will receive their honors at the association's 2019 spring meeting, are:
• Melvin Mooney Distinguished Technology Award, sponsored by Lion Elastomers : Manfred Klueppel, professor of polymer materials and rubber technology and head of the Material Concepts and Modeling Department at the German Institute of Rubber Technology in Hanover, Germany. He has contributed to various aspects of polymer science and rubber technology, especially regarding filler networking and reinforcement of elastomers, rubber friction and tire traction, as well as modeling the non-linear response of elastomer nanocomposites up to large deformations. He has published more than 200 scientific papers, two books and nine book chapters on polymer science and elastomer physics.
• George Stafford Whitby Award for Distinguished Teaching & Research, sponsored by Cabot Corp.: Ulrich Giese, professor and managing director and head of the Elastomer and Analytical Chemistry, also at the German Institute of Rubber Technology. Since 2010 he has been managing director of the institute, and is a distinguished professor at Leibniz University of Hanover in applied polymer chemistry. Under his leadership the German Institute of Rubber Technology has become known as one of the world's leading research and development institutes with expertise in such rubber technologies as chemistry, physics, simulation, processing, material development and modeling. He is the author of 126 papers in journals and proceedings, has given more than 155 lectures at national and international conferences, and holds one patent.
• Sparks-Thomas Award, sponsored by ExxonMobil: Pamela Martin, who works in advanced materials and product development at the Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre. Since joining TARRC in 2008, she has been involved in advanced materials and product development, primarily with epoxidized natural rubber in tire compounds. More recently, Martin has focused on the problems of tire wear, particularly on the poor correlation between laboratory abrasion testing and real-world wear.
• Chemistry of Thermoplastic Elastomers Award, sponsored by the Ralph S. Graff Foundation: Timothy Long, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and director of the Macromolecules Innovation Institute at Virginia Tech, from where he received his doctorate. He spent nearly a decade as a research scientist at Eastman Kodak Co. before returning to Virginia Tech as a professor in the Department of Chemistry. He has more than 43 patents in the field of macromolecular science and engineering, and has recently exceeded 230 peer-reviewed publications.
• Fernley H. Banbury Award, sponsored by Endurica L.L.C.: Charles Herd, director of rubber carbon black technology, at Birla Carbon. He pioneered the characterization of carbon black aggregates by fractal geometry and shape classification using TEM, according to his nominating letter. This was the basis of a new range of carbon blacks that was developed that were tailored through furnace reactor control to significantly expand the trade-offs between dispersion, hysteresis and failure in rubber compounds. Herd has published 20 journal articles and holds three patents.