Dear fellow SPE TPM&F Division members,

I bet everyone had a great Thanksgiving break! On behalf of the SPE TPM&F board of directors, I wish everyone enjoy the rest of the holiday season. Everyone deserves some relaxing time from the hard work and get together with families & friends.

Looking back at the year 2018, in February we kicked off the year-long wonderful SPE TPM&F programs with the Polyolefins 2018 conference in Houston. In May we had the great ANTEC^® conference in Orlando. Coming into September, our annual FOAMS^® conference was successfully held in Montreal, Canada. I really appreciate the great work by the leaders for those flagship TPM&F programs: Donna Davis for Polyolefins Conference, Prof. Chad Zeng for ANTEC^® conference, and Dr. Stephane Costeux for FOAMS^® conference. We recognized our 2017 Outstanding Achievement Award (OAA) recipient Dr. S.T. Lee in ANTEC^® 2018 and the 2018 OAA recipient Dr. Jim Throne in FOAMS^® 2018. We are proud of the significant achievements of our own board directors: Professor Masahiro Ohshima being appointed the Dean of the Engineering School and the Graduate School of Engineering at Kyoto University; Donna Davis being inducted to Plastic Hall of Fame in the NPE/ ANTEC^® 2018.

Led by our Education Committee Chair Dr. Kim McLoughlin, TPM&F spent a great deal of resources on students. Multiple TPM&F scholarships were offered, including Chatterjee Travel Awards, Salvatore J. Monte Scholarship, and Michael Reedy TPM&F Scholarship. In honor of our long-term Board Director Ray Shute who passed away earlier this year, we will establish a Raymond Shute Scholarship in 2019. In addition, we sponsored the Plastics and Polymer Engineering Technology Department at Pennsylvania College of Technology for a student tour (8 students and 2 faculty members) of five plastics material suppliers in the Pittsburgh area. Another TPM&F sponsored event is the PlastiVan in Pittsburgh in October 2017. TPM&F grant also enabled a Student Paper Contest in U of Toronto.

In the newsletter please enjoy the full-text papers for our two best papers: ANTEC^® 2018 Best Paper "Protected biofilm growth in macroporous polyvinylidene fluoride carriers for biological organic removal from municipal wastewater"; and the FOAMS^® 2018 Best Paper "Improvement In Morphology and Mechanical Properties of Extruted Polystyrene Foams with Trisamide Based Additives". Congrulations again to authors!

Respectfully Submitted
Dr. Changchun (Chad) Zeng
SPE TPM&F Division Chair