Research Scientist
The Dow Chemical Company
Collegeville, Pennsylvania

Biography:

Tirtha Chatterjee is a Research Scientist at The Dow Chemical Company. He received his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering in 2008 from the University of Houston after which he pursued a post-doctoral fellowship at the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He joined The Dow Chemical Company in 2010. His research interests include structure and property of polymers and soft matters. Tirtha has authored 2 book chapters, 23 peer-reviewed publications, 2 granted patents and also has filed several priority patent applications. He is actively involved in external scientific activities such as reviewing proposals for NSF (DMR), NIST Neutron scattering beam time allocations, reviewing manuscripts for several peer-reviewed journals and organizing multiple sessions at the APS March meeting (DPOLY, FIAP). Specifically, he has served in the organizing committee of the first-ever APS “Industry Day” Symposium held in 2015 and represented his organization(Dow) as an invited participant in the “Soft Matter working group discussions” that initiated the formation of the APS GSOFT forum. Tirtha also served as the DPOLY education committee member for the 2014-2016 cycle.

Statement:

One of the major goals of the FIAP is to encourage and build a lasting relationship between industry and society specifically future generation of bright scientists. I am an industrial researcher and have been associated with the APS for 12 years now. In my journey from graduate student to a professional I have greatly benefited from close association with the APS community which I would like to extend to the current pool of developing scientists. Graduate students that are introduced to APS during their training years often tend to move out of the organization after entering non-academic research pathways such as industry. As an organization it is important to stress on the continuum of members through different phases of their career and to create a unified platform for interaction of researchers from different walks of society. If elected in the FIAP executive committee as a Member-at-large, my primary agenda would be to provide direction to our future generation of scientists (graduate students) by connecting them with professionals in the industry (FIAP members). Specific objectives would be:

1. Promoting career counselling and network building for graduate students
2. Working with other APS groups/divisions to ensure increased industry participation
3. Continuing to work towards building a strong industry-academia relationship that will foster a strong connection between basic and applied research [especially for professionals working in smaller organizations that do not have existing resources for such opportunities].