IPST Holds 2012 Members' Meeting

"Leveraging Emerging Technologies to Advance Forest Biomaterials Business"

IPST held its 2012 Meeting of Members, “Leveraging Emerging Technologies To Advance Forest Biomaterials Business,” April 10-11 in the Tricentennial Building.  Twenty-two member company representatives and 4 affiliate organizations attended the meeting.

Student poster session

The meeting format reflected the urging from members to provide more interaction with IPST’s graduate students.  Accordingly, each section of the meeting featured student speakers reporting on their industry research.  Twenty-four students presented posters at a reception in the Tricentennial lobby, in which there was significant member and faculty interest.  The posters and their abstracts are posted on the IPST website.

	IPC Foundation Innovation prize-winner Jie Wu responds to a member’s question as Professor Carson Meredith looks on

College of Engineering Dean Gary May led off with an overview of the capabilities of Georgia Tech.  Executive Vice President-Research Steve Cross described the university’s strategic plan—“innovation on steroids”—to continue its drive to provide relevant solutions to industry challenges by teaching students to explore “disruptive innovation”; he noted that IPST is a model of industry-centric research, and that it was the first to sponsor the Georgia Tech Innovation and Research Conference.  Ron Rousseau, chair of the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, described IPST as doing “what we’re trying to do at Tech—solve problems whose solutions would have real impact.”  Ken Stewart, a senior advisor on industry strategy, spoke of there being “a thousand doors to open at Georgia Tech,” and mentioned that navigation assistance and guidance are available to those who opened the door to the IPST portal.   Ben Wang, Georgia Tech’s chief manufacturing officer, commented that 90% of patents in the United States come from manufacturing, and emphasized the importance of vitality in this economic sector.

UPM representative Heiki Ilvespaa discusses an insight with fellow conferees

Each of IPST’s three strategic thrusts—operational excellence, new materials from forest biomass, and biorefining—was the subject of a two-hour segment made up of faculty experts, students, and a panel discussion led by a member company representative.  Special sessions on novel coatings and on combined heat & power impacts were also offered.  Chris Smoak of Tech’s Cyber Technology and Information Security Lab, addressed guests at dinner about current Cyber Threats and Defenses. Other expert resources providing guidance about how intellectual property is handled and how to create effective partnerships with Georgia Tech rounded out the meeting.

The session was rich with presentations from eighteen faculty members from IPST and the wider Georgia Tech community.  All of their presentations can be found on IPST’s website.

“Our objectives were to introduce the students and their work; to provide valuable information and tools to participants; and to encourage members to expand the advantages of their memberships,” commented IPST director Norman Marsolan.  “I feel certain that we accomplished the first two, and follow-up conversations suggest that we achieved the third as well.”