Judit E. Puskas 2017 Charles Goodyear Medalist

Professor Puskas is currently professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Akron. She receives the 2017 Goodyear medal in recognition of her pioneering contributions to the synthesis and characterization of advanced elastomers for healthcare and other applications.

Professor Puskas received her M. E. Sc. degree in organic and biochemical engineering in 1977, and her Ph.D. in plastics and rubber technology in 1985 from the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary, in a collaboration funded jointly by the National Science Foundation of the USA, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her advisors were Professors Ferenc Tüdös and Tibor Kelen of Hungary, and Professor Joseph P. Kennedy at the University of Akron, Ohio, USA. She then entered an industrial career in polymer research and development in the microelectronic, paint and rubber industries. While employed by LANXESS (formerly the Rubber Division of Bayer), Prof. Puskas headed global butyl rubber research, and produced patents for butyl technologies: bimodal butyl, one-step halobutyl, branched butyl, and a liquid carbon dioxide process. In 1996, she entered an academic career, and continued the development of new polyisobutylene-based materials.¹ She held the LANXESS (Bayer) Industrial Research Chair in Polymer Science at the University of Akron from 2004–2008, working closely with the rubber industry. She is a coinventor of the polymer used on the Taxus® coronary stent. She is one of the editors of Interdisciplinary Reviews in Nanomedicine and NanoBiotechnology WIRE, and a member of the Advisory Board of the European Polymer Journal. She was also a member of the IUPAC Working Party IV.2.1 “Structure-property relationships of commercial polymers.” During her career, she has won many awards, including the 2009 “Chemistry of Thermoplastic Elastomers” Award of the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society. In 2012 she was one of five winners of the GE Healthymagination Breast Cancer Challenge Award. In 2014 she was named the Joseph M. Gingo Chair in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Akron. Her research is currently focused on the integration of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment with breast reconstruction, green polymer chemistry,² biomimetic processes and biomaterials, living/controlled polymerizations, polymerization mechanisms and kinetics, thermoplastic elastomers and polymer structure/property relationships, and probing the polymer-bio interface.