Dear fellow members of the SPE TPM&F Division,
It is a great pleasure to write to you as the newly elected Chair of the SPE’s Thermoplastic Materials and Foams (TPM&F) Division. Going forward, I would like to promote the activities of TPM&F for organization of conferences and expanding the division’s technical program contributions further by associating with other divisions/sections of the society. This would help SPE members to promote education and public awareness for how industry/ university collaborations are addressing current challenges the polymer industry is facing.
Year 2024 was very productive for our division. We have been meeting with people in person at conferences to interact more and continuously learn about emerging sustainable materials and technologies. We started our key activities in March with the Polyolefins 2024 conference in Galveston, TX. The SPE ANTEC 2024 was held in March in Philadelphia, PA, showcasing the latest advances on plastics engineering, thermoplastic materials, sustainability, polymer processing and digitization and additive manufacturing. To finish the conference series, FOAMS® 2024 was successfully held in King of Prussia, PA in September. It enlarged the boundaries of our program internationally. It was a premier forum related to new developments in foaming technologies. The Foams Tutorial covering foam fundamentals and foam applications was conducted to help students and foam professionals to enhance their knowledge and apply scientific principles to their work every day. We congratulate Felix Lizalde Arroyo of the University of Valladolid, Spain, for receiving the
Best Paper Award for the FOAMS® 2024 Conference for his paper and presentation entitled “Production, Characterization and Structure-Property Relationships In Nano-cellular Polyetherimide”.
Our division has remained very active in the first part of 2025, with another successful Polyolefins conference in February 2025 and TPM&F sessions at SPE ANTEC in Philadelphia in March. On behalf of our board, I would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere appreciation to the leadership of these conferences, specifically, to Wen Li and Donna Davis for the Polyolefins conference, Dr. Kimberly McLoughlin for assembling the technical TPM&F program at SPE ANTEC 2025, and Dr. Stephane Costeux and Mr. Mark Lavach (SPE Palisades-MidAtlantic chapter) for organizing FOAMS 2024. I also want to thank Dr. Chul Park for leading the
Outstanding Achievement Award panel, to Dr. Shu-Kai Yeh and Dr. Ryan Hall for organizing the judging of our
student awards, and all the board members for doing an outstanding job in taking care of all board activities and executing them well with enthusiasm. Special thanks to Dr. Anson Wong for the membership report stating that the total membership had steadied for the past one year. We are exploring new avenues to expand our membership opportunities. Maxwell Wingert provided financial reports at board meetings regularly.
I would like to highlight a few upcoming events. The Foams 2025 Conference & Tutorials will be held in Naples, Italy in October. The Polyolefins 2026 conference will be held in Galveston, TX in February. The SPE ANTEC 2026 is planned for March 9-12 in Pittsburgh, PA. I strongly encourage you all to attend to enjoy these events and introduce your friends and colleagues to bring great benefits to their professional career.
Best regards,
Dr. Ashutosh H Sharma,
Chair, TPM&F Board of SPE,
Industry Consultant
(845) 453-0706ahsharma@gmail.com