Spontak selected to deliver 2012 Rubber Foundation Lecture

Dr. Richard Spontak, alumni distinguished professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University, has been selected to deliver the 2012 Rubber Foundation lecture of the Polymer Society in the United Kingdom.

Spontak will present his lecture, “The Future of Modified Thermoplastic Elastomers as a Class of Soft Materials for Advanced Technologies,” in London in late December. The Polymer Society is a division of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. Spontak won the institute’s Colwyn Medal last year for his seminal research involving thermoplastic elastomer systems.

Before joining the NC State faculty in 1992, Spontak worked as a research scientist with Procter and Gamble. He has authored or co-authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications, and his work has been featured on 19 international journal covers and one book. He is the recipient of an Alumni Outstanding Research Award, the 2007 Ernst Ruska Prize of the German Electron Microscopy Society, and the American Chemical Society’s 2006 Cooperative Research Award in Polymer Science and 2008 Chemistry of Thermoplastic Elastomers Award, as well as the 2011 Colwyn Medal for elastomer research by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and sits on several editorial advisory boards and is editor-in-chief of three. A member of the NC State Academy of Outstanding Teachers, Spontak received the College of Engineering’s 2003 Blessis Award and the 2008 University of North Carolina Board of Governors’ Award for Teaching Excellence. He was also named the 2012 Lars Onsager Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Spontak earned his BS from the Penn State in 1983 and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, both in chemical engineering. He then pursued post-doctoral studies in materials science and metallurgy at the University of Cambridge in England and soft matter physics at the Institute for Energy Technology in Norway. His research interests include multifunctional and nanostructured polymers, polymer morphology and phase stability, and application of microscopy techniques to polymer science and engineering.