Judit E. Puskas, Ph.D., P. Eng
BIOGRAPHY

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Dr. Puskas received a PhD in plastics and rubber technology in 1985, and an M. E. Sc in organic and biochemical engineering in 1977, from the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary. Her advisors were Professors Ferenc Tüdös and Tibor Kelen of Hungary, and Professor Joseph P. Kennedy at the University of Akron, Ohio, USA, in the framework of collaboration between the National Science Foundation of the USA and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She started her academic career in 1996. Before that, she was involved in polymer research and development in the microelectronic, paint and rubber industries.

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Her present interests include green polymer chemistry, biomimetic processes and biomaterials, living/controlled polymerizations, polymerization mechanisms and kinetics, thermoplastic elastomers and polymer structure/property relationships, and probing the polymer-bio interface.

She is one of the editors of the new Interdisciplinary Reviews in Nanomedicine and NanoBiotechnology WIRE, Published by Wiley-Blackwell, and a member of the Advisory Board, of the European Polymer Journal. Until July of 2008 she was one of the two regional Editors with the highest citation index. She was also member of the IUPAC Working Party IV.2.1 "Structure-property relationships of commercial polymers."

Puskas has been published in more than 300 publications, including technical reports, is an inventor or co-inventor of 20 U.S. patents and applications, and has been Chair or organizer of a number of international conferences.

She is the recipient of several awards, including the 1999 PEO (Professional Engineers of Ontario, Canada) Medal in Research & Development, a 2000 Premier's Research Excellence Award, and the 2004 Mercator Professorship Award from the DFG (Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, German Research Foundation).

Puskas was Group Leader of Butyl Technology in the Rubber Division of Bayer Inc. (now LANXESS Inc.) before she left industry. From 1998 to 2003 she held the Bayer/NSERC (Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Industrial Research Chair in Elastomer technology, and was the Director of the Macromolecular Engineering Research Centre at the University of Western Ontario in Canada from 1996 to 2004.

In August of 2004, she joined the Faculty in the Department of Polymer Science of the College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering of the University of Akron, where she held the LANXESS (previously Bayer) Industrial Chair until June 30, 2008. She has been awarded her third NSF grant in 2008. As a co-inventor of the polymer used on the Taxus® coronary stent, she helped the University of Akron to generate more than $5 million in license fees.