Melvin Mooney award winner Blume breaks barrier of her own

WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio—Females definitely have made inroads in the male-dominated tire and rubber industry over the past decade or so.

It may be hard at times to judge that progress, however. But there do remain barriers to break through, though sometimes that is done quietly, with little fanfare.

That's what happened with Anke Blume, a professor of engineering technology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Earlier this spring, she was honored with the ACS Rubber Division's Melvin Mooney Distinguished Technology Award, which goes to an individual who exhibits "exceptional technical competency by making significant and repeated contributions to rubber science and technology."

Blume received the award for work in silica and silanes for rubber applications while working with Degussa A.G., now Evonik Industries A.G.

Sometime between when the Rubber Division announced its award recipients for 2023 and the awards banquet at its Spring Technical Meeting in Warrensville Heights, Blume went online to look at the long list of Mooney Award winners, which was established in 1983 to honor the developer of the Mooney Viscometer and other testing equipment.

As she perused the list, taking in the feeling that she was "now one of them," something jumped out at her. No woman had been a recipient of the honor before her.

When Judit Puskas, now with Ohio State University, was selected as the 2017 winner of the Charles Goodyear Medal, the Rubber Division's leader made note of her breaking the barrier as the first female to win the association's highest honor.

But that wasn't the case with Blume's award, which she was thrilled to receive.

"At first it feels strange," Blume told Rubber News. "You normally can't really judge your own performance. Of course, I love my job, but it's such an honor.

"Then I saw no other female had gotten the prize—it brings back some of the challenges I had to face. It feels now really nice another breakthrough for this award that females are not taking into account. It's really nice."

Blume initially studied chemistry at the University of Hanover, and earned her doctorate from the German Institute for Rubber Technology in 1995.

She loved studying chemistry. Her master's thesis dealt with understanding the formation of nitrosamines, work she continued as she studied for her doctorate. "That was my start in the rubber world," Blume said.

Upon earning her Ph.D., she passed up an offer to go into the industry, as her love of science led her to take a post-doctoral position. But when Degussa offered her a position in applied technology that was very much research-oriented, it hit her as a job she could thrive in.

"I had a feeling that's a very good compromise between doing research, but is application-oriented where you have direct use for it," Blume said. "When you research deeply for something you want to understand, but you can directly use it in a specific application to make use of the gained knowledge, that's what I still like."

So in 1996 she joined Degussa, where at the start she was involved in silica development, where reducing rolling resistance was in full swing at the time. One of the main products she helped developed was Ultrasil 7000, now one of the two most commonly used silica types in tire tread compounds.

Blume really enjoyed the teamwork approach at Degussa. Team members had the freedom to develop their own ideas, she said, but the process they followed made them better.

"It's good to have your own ideas, but then to join forces and to develop things together that are valid for today. Then you can really combine the strength," she said.

"That's how I really love to work. When I have something in mind, then I can share it directly with somebody else, and we can develop it further. And somebody else can bring another idea, and in this way you can really let something grow."

Later she joined a team that worked on silane development. Blume said the work there to develop a new mercapto silane was driven mainly by Oliver Klockmann, who died in February at age 54.

Blume said the goal on the silane side was understanding the whole coupling mechanism. She was involved in the kinetics, to see how fast the different coupling occurs depending on the structure of the different silanes.

In the end, she said, you can use varying combinations to gain the desired properties. "You can play around with the whole tool box: temperature, time, rotor speed. All the variable when you create compounds."

Early in her career at Degussa, it wasn't uncommon for Blume to receive an invitation to an important meeting that read something like: "Dear Sirs and Dear Mrs. Blume."

Being the only female in the group with a doctorate, she said that sometimes, as a female, you have the feeling that first you have to prove that females can be scientific experts.

"I saw especially with rubber colleagues, when my male colleagues discuss something with the compounders, then that was directly accepted," Blume said. "As a female, first I had to show them, 'OK, I understand this as well, so you can also discuss this topic with me.' That's sometimes more challenging to fight for it, and not so easily accepted."

On the other hand, there can be some advantages, she said, once you find that acceptance because people will recognize you as the only female.

For the first decade or so of her career, she often was the only female at a conference. At bigger gatherings, there might be a handful of women.

"It has changed now. You can see that more and more young females are joining the rubber industry, which is a really positive tendency," Blume said.

At Degussa, the management and leaders were good at treating her equally from the beginning, with the fights for acceptance more from other internal groups, such as the compounders.

The most challenging thing for her was when she started her family. She and her husband have two sons and a daughter, now ages 19, 20 and 23.

Blume said she was lucky at the time to have a boss who said Degussa wanted to have more females in upper positions, so they would have to find a way to deal with women who were starting families.

So she was able to take a half-year off after the birth of her first child, then go back part time.

"It worked quite well when you have project-based work," she said. "I was then dealing with five projects instead of 10, which is absolutely doable."

Blume said she did have to educate her colleagues at the time that she was only available at specific times for meetings, as schools closed at a certain time. Even that had a side benefit, her colleagues told her, as they learned to use their time more efficiently and finish meetings quicker.

In October 2013, Blume began to split her time between Degussa/Evonik and a new career in academia, as she joined the University of Twente. At first it was only 30 percent, but that grew to 40 and then 50 percent, until finally the school asked her to consider going full time, as her group of students had grown.

"My kids were really grown up, and I said now it's the right time to go for only one job," said Blume, who left Evonik in April 2021.

While she loved her job at Evonik, she liked the possibility that research at a university would allow her to concentrate on areas other that the use of silica for tires. "It really opened the door for a lot more possibilities.

It was sometimes challenging to handle careers in industry and academia, not to mention a family, so she had to find the right balance for all three.

Some of the topics she now is focusing on in her work at the University of Twente includes sustainability projects, looking at alternative fillers, oils and resins. "We have a lot of possibility to vary," Blume said. "I think it's a big, open field, and it is the future."

The school offers a course that takes a six-month deep dive into elastomer technology and engineering. When she took aver the course 10 years ago, there were only 10 students. Now there are 26, with about half being females.

When they have open positions for the program, Blume said they advertise and post on LinkedIn, and get interest from around the world, and they currently have 14 different nationalities represented in her chair.

They are looking for people who have some experience with rubber or other polymers, but also those who like to work in the lab, and aren't afraid to stand in front of the mixer and run it on their own.

"We want students who will bring their curiosity with them, that they really want to understand things," Blume said. "I think that's very important that you don't get bored after a short time, but have resistance to fight your way through it, especially in the Ph.D. fields. That means four years of real intensive studying."

As a professor, Blume sees her job as transferring the passion she had for the topic to her students. "Then we have done things right," she said.