About Our Organization

Gary Wnek is the Joseph F. Toot, Jr., Professor of Engineering and Professor and Chair of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University and has been at CWRU since 2004. He was previously a faculty member in The Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT and the Department of Chemistry at RPI, and was the Founding Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University in its new School of Engineering. Research interests include processing of polymer multi-layer and polymer fiber/matrix composites, deformation processing, flammability mitigation of common polymers, and synthetic macromolecular constructs that mimic physiological functions.

He has authored or co-authored over 210 publications and holds 38 US patents. He received the 2007 John W. Hyatt Award (benefit to society) from the Society of Plastics Engineers for his work on polymer nano- and microfibers for regenerative medicine and related biomedical applications. He earned a Ph.D. In Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a B.S. Degree in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Professor Joshua Otaigbe joined The University of Southern Mississippi faculty in 2002 after a successful career at Iowa state University where he was a tenure faculty member in both Depts. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science & Enginering, and Leader of Polymers and Composite Research Group. Professor Otaigbe joined the Iowa StateUniversity faculty in 1994. Before joining Iowa State, he worked as a Project Leader for Corning Incorporated in New York. Earlier, he held academic positions at the University of Alberta, Canada, and University of Benin in Nigeria. Professor Otaigbe earned his B.S. degree in industrial chemistry (1979) in Nigeria and the Ph.D. Degree in polymer science and engineering (1984) from the University of Manchester (UMIST), England.

In 2002, Professor Otaigbe was elected a Fellow of the United Kingdom Institute of materials for contributions of international significance to the polymer and composite materials field. This is the highest honor bestowed upon professional members of this international science and engineering institute. He is also a Senior Member of Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) and in 2001, he was elected to the SPE Board of Directors, EPSDIV. Professor Otaigbe was awarded a visiting professorship for the Summer of 2003 at the Swiss Federal Institute of technology (ETH-Zurich) in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2005, Professor Otaigbe was elected a Fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers.

Professor Otaigbe’s research is in the areas of polymer engineering and materials science. His research blends chemical engineering sciences with materials structure and property principles to understand and improve processes for advanced materials. He is also actively involved in university-industry partnerships to solve industrially relevant problems. These problems are often at the boundaries between established disciplines or in areas combining many disciplines that may ultimately lead to discovery. Through careful mentoring, he is empowering young engineers to develop the discipline to continue learning, and encouraging them to take creativity excursions outside the imagined constraints of their specialized areas that may ultimately lead to most exciting opportunities for the future.

Professor Otaigbe received the prestigious U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Best Paper-Polyolefins Award from the Thermoplastic materials and Foams Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers, USA. He was listed as an honored member in Who’s Who of American Inventors (1998-1999 edition).

Dr. Leslie Patton is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology (DABT). She specializes in human health risk assessment, particularly in applications related to food contact, food additives, pesticides, consumer products, and cosmetics. She has extensive experience developing food contact notifications (FCN) and GRAS notices and routinely works with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on behalf of industries making such submissions. She is an expert in 21 CFR compliance issues for food contact substances.

Leslie performs quantitative risk assessments for new chemicals as part of the preparation of Pre-Manufacture Notices (PMNs) for submission to US EPA.. She assesses hazard, exposure, and labeling for a variety of consumer products including cosmetics, personal care products, household cleaners and dietary supplements. She develops data waiver rationales for human health and environmental toxicology requirements for registrations of conventional, antimicrobial and biochemical pesticides, and writes inert ingredient petitions for these products.

EDUCATION​

• BS in Natural Resources — University of Michigan
• PhD in Environmental Toxicology — Cornell University

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

Society of Toxicology (SOT)​

LinkedIn Profile

Roger is an independent Consultant, founder and director of two companies, Rothon Research Limited and ECOfillers Limited. He was a visiting professor at Manchester Metropolitan University from 1995- 2018.He was also a visiting scientist at CSIRO Minerals in Melbourne Australia from 1994 until 2010. He is now a visiting Research Fellow at The University of Chester where he is actively researching new inorganic materials derived from carbon capture processes.

He has spent over 40 years working in the fields of inorganic filler production, surface modification and filled polymer composites and has many publications. His particular interests are in flame retardant fillers, surface modifiers for particulate materials and in novel silica and calcium silicates for a variety of applications including composites and mesoporous absorbents. He has commercialized a number of products for use in composites and a process for recovering and repurposing polyvinylbutyral from end-of-life safety glass such as automotive windscreens.