Dear fellow members of the SPE TPM&F Division,

It is a great pleasure to write to you as the Chair of the SPE’s Thermoplastic Materials and Foams (TPM&F) Division. I would like to inform you about the recent activities of TPM&F organized conferences and expanding the division’s technical program contributions this year further by associating with external organizations such as Foams Expo in addition to other divisions/sections of the society. This helps SPE members to promote education and public awareness for how industry/ university collaborations are addressing current challenges the polymer industry is facing. We continue to award students with scholarships every year.

Year 2025-26 has been very productive for our division. We continue to have meetings in person at the conferences to interact more and continuously learn about emerging sustainable materials and technologies.

The Foams 2025 Conference & Tutorials was held in Naples, Italy in October last year, and attracted over 100 attendees. This year we started our key activities with the Polyolefins 2026 conference in Texas. ANTEC® 2026 was held at Pittsburgh, March 9–12, 2026, with expanded learning and networking for plastics engineering, thermoplastic materials, sustainability, polymer processing and digitization and additive manufacturing.

For the first time this year in June 2026, our division joined forces with the Foams Expo to organize the FOAMS 2026 conference in Novi MI. It was a premier forum related to new developments in foaming technologies. The Foams Tutorial covering fundamentals and applications was conducted to help students and foam professionals to enhance their knowledge and apply scientific principles to their work every day. We congratulate Dr. Xiaoxi Wang and Mr. Perry Vadhar as joint conference chairs. We also thank Professor Miguel A. R. Perez, Professor Patrick Lee and Dr. Wenyi Huang for technical program coordination. Special recognition was also given on behalf of the Foams Conference committee to Dr. Anson Wong, Professor Ernesto Di Maio, Dr. Kimberly McLoughlin, Dr. Ashutosh Sharma and Mr. Perry Vadhar for a very successful Foams Tutorials focused on sustainability in foams.

Our division has remained very active in 2026, with TPM&F sessions at SPE ANTEC. 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. I also want to thank Dr. Chul Park for leading the Outstanding Achievement Award panel, and to Dr. Ryan Hall for organizing the judging of our student awards, and all the board members for doing outstanding jobs 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 years. We are exploring new avenues to expand our membership opportunities. Maxwell Wingert provided financial reports at board meetings regularly.

I would like to highlight our upcoming events. The Polyolefins 2027 conference will be held in Galveston, TX, in February. The SPE ANTEC 2027 is planned in May in Orlando, Fl as a joint event with NPE exhibition. Finally, I am very pleased that we are planning our next Foams conference in Barcelona, Spain during September 2027. 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, SPE TPM&F Division
Industry Consultant
(845) 453-0706
ahsharma@gmail.com