Dr. Costas G. Gogos

 Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Polymer Processing Institute (PPI)

 

PPI Member of the Technical Board

 

President Emeritus of the Polymer Processing Institute

 

Distinguished Research Professor of the Otto York Ch. E Department,

New Jersey Institute of Technology

 

Professor Emeritus of the Ch. E Department, Stevens Institute of Technology

 


 


Prof. Gogos received both his undergraduate and graduate education at Princeton University, where he studied Polymer Engineering at the Princeton Plastics Laboratory under the late Prof. Bryce Maxwell.

 

He joined the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Department of Stevens in 1965. In the decade following, the late Prof. Joseph A. Biesenberger and he established the premier Polymer Engineering program at Stevens.  During his 34 years at Stevens, he taught and conducted research on polymer processing, flow-induced crystallization, injection and reactive injection mold filling, reactive polymer processing, applied rheology, and the phenomena of polymer melting and mixing of polymer blends to create micro-structured (“designer-pellet”) polymer systems. His Stevens Polymer Engineering colleagues and he were also instrumental in establishing a broad series of continuing education courses for the nascent Plastics Institute of America (PIA), headquartered, then, at Stevens.

 

From 1974 to 1983 he led the efforts of the University of Akron, Case-Western Reserve University, U Mass-Lowell, NJIT, University of Wisconsin, and Stevens to create and establish departments of Polymer Engineering and Plastics Technology for the Algerian Petroleum Institute, serving as the head of the Academic Steering Committee. The results of this effort were three model curricula on Polymer Technology (2-year), Polymer Engineering (4-year), and Polymer Engineering and Science (MS), as well as a Technology Transfer Center to the Algerian polymer industry.

 

In 1979 he co-authored with Prof. Zehev Tadmor Principles of Polymer Processing, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1979.  The book has served as the standard text in the field, in both industry and the academe. Profs. Tadmor and Gogos are writing the 2nd edition of the text to be published in early 2006.  The 2nd edition will incorporate important new knowledge on the Elementary Steps of Processing, adding that of Devolatilization, and expand the text adding chapters on Twin-rotor Processing Equipment, Compounding, and Reactive Processing.

 

Dr. Gogos was one of the co-founders of the Polymer Processing Institute (PPI) (1982), championed by the late Prof. Luigi Z. Pollara of Stevens.  PPI has been a model Industry/Academe “buffer” independent not-for-profit industrial research organization serving the polymer industry worldwide.   He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of PPI, President Emeritus and Member of the Technical Board.  Previously he served PPI as President, Director of New Initiatives and Head of the Polymer Mixing Study, which was supported by as many as 19 international industrial sponsors.  The Polymer Mixing Study dealt with experimental and computational aspects of laminar dispersive mixing in immiscible compatibilized and reactive polymer blends, as well as the study of melting of single and multi-component polymer systems by the mechanism of Plastic Energy Dissipation (PED).

 

In 1999, after becoming Professor Emeritus of Stevens, he was appointed Distinguished ChE Research Professor at NJIT. At the same time the PPI laboratories and operations also moved from Stevens to NJIT. There he is involved in active research in polymer processing, currently heading a large Federally-funded NJIT/PPI program, teaching occasional graduate courses and continuing his technical participation in PPI- Polymer Industry collaborative projects.

 

Prof. Gogos has advised 18 Ph.D. and 28 Master’s students and is the author of over 100 technical publications in the fields of flow-induced crystallization, applied polymer rheology, injection and reactive molding, extrusion, reactive processing, laminar dispersive mixing, melting by plastic Energy Dissipation, and controlled microstructure development during processing.

 

Dr. Gogos is a Fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), the 1999 Recipient of the SPE Extrusion Division Distinguished Service Award, and the 2002 SPE Fred O. Conley Award for Plastics Engineering/Technology and the 2005 SPE International Award, the highest honor the Society of Plastics Engineers bestows a member annually.