TAPE CLASSES FACULTY

Experienced, dedicated PSTC Tape Training classes faculty members are active within the tape industry and daily experience the specific skills needed to excel. They share their love and knowledge of the PSA tape industry with students in a casual atmosphere that promotes information exchange between faculty and students.

Chair

Lars Kilian, Ph.D.

Group Leader of the Pressure Sensitive Adhesives R&D group at Ashland Specialty Ingredients in Dublin, OH. Kilian leads Ashland’s product development efforts for high-performance permanent and removable acrylic PSAs for the tape and label industries. Previously, he was a Research Scientist in Ashland’s Packaging and Converting R&D group, developing solvent-based and waterborne acrylic PSAs. His technical efforts were primarily focused on solution and emulsion acrylic polymerization, coater-ready PSA formulation product development, and PSA test method development. Lars received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Ph. D. in Organic Polymer Chemistry at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.

Faculty:

Andreas Meier

Andreas Meier is the Director of Research and Development at tesa for North America. He started his career at a tesa 21 years ago in one of the manufacturing plants in Germany in the process development department, where he optimized design and manufacturing processes of pressure sensitive adhesives on solvent and hotmelt coating lines. Before moving to the US Andreas worked for 10 years in various positions at tesa HQ in Hamburg, Germany. He gained 3 years of experience as an international Application Solution Engineer for the BU Automotive and managed the Research and Development department of the BU Automotive for 5 years. Andreas received his PhD in Physical Chemistry at the University of Hamburg, Germany and worked for 3 years as a Postdoc at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado on photo electrochemical conversion systems.

John T. Poulton, American Biltrite, Inc. and PSTC Educational Advisor

Received his B.S. in Chemistry from Rutgers University. After graduation, he worked for seven years at National Casein as a polymer chemist developing structural adhesives for the construction and paper packaging industries. For the past 28 years, John has been involved with the PSA tape industry primarily in new product development, tech service and quality assurance – servicing the automotive, HVAC, metal fabrication and graphic industries. He is currently the Vice President of Research and Development for American Biltrite and Ideal Tape.

Roopram Ramharack

Roopram previously worked in Research at 3M, Polaroid and Unilever. He was the Vice President of Operations and HR at Adchem Corp and the Vice President for R&D for tesa tape inc (Beiersdorf). Roopram has a Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry from the Polytechnic Institute of NYU. He is a two time winner of the Carl Dahlquist Award and is in the Hall of Fame at PSTC. He holds eight patents and fifteen journal papers.

Steve Schroff

Business Development Chemist for Mactac North America.  For over 20 years, Steve has been formulating adhesives and developing PSA laminates for medical devices used in the diagnostics, electrode, wound care, fenestration and packaging markets.  He began his career at Adhesives Research in the medical R&D department before joining Mactac in 2003.  While at Mactac, Steve has focused on expanding the medical product portfolio through R&D and sourcing initiatives as well as improving the manufacturing capabilities.  In 2010 Steve began the work of transiting Mactac’s solvent adhesive systems used in medical and technical products over to 100% solids UV adhesive technology.  He has also been instrumental in establishing Mactac’s new capabilities through his capital & process engineering efforts.  Steve earned a B.S. in Chemistry & Mathematics from Thiel College.

Michael L Tumey, Ph.D., PSTC Technical Advisor

Received his B.S. in Chemistry from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from Iowa State University. He retired from 3M after 38 years in which he held various R&D positions, with extensive experience in PSA tape product development.

Abboud L. Mamish

Technical industry consultant. Retired from Berry Global in 2019 as Vice President of Innovation. Starting at Berry in 1980 as a Research Development Engineer leading to a series of progressive functions in product development with emphasis on PSA Industrial tape formulations, with greater emphasis in the areas of automotive, Building and Construction and corrosion protection applications in both product and process development role as well as managing operations engineering team.  Additionally, his experience extends into the extrusion and coextrusion of polymers and web coating process technologies.   He holds 9 US and 7 international patents in tape formulation, processes and application methods and had authored 6 technical papers.  A graduate from the University of Massachusetts-Lowell with both Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Plastics Engineering.

Roland H. Horst, Ph. D.

Roland H. Horst, Ph. D., studied chemistry and polymer science at the University of Mainz, Germany, and received his doctorate in 1992. He worked at Mainz University as a research associate and lecturer. He was awarded a German Science Foundation Fellowship for his postdoctoral research the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1998. He stayed there as a research associate and lecturer until he joined Berry Global in 2004 as a rheologist. He then took on responsibilities for all analytical testing and is now the Product Development Manager in their Franklin KY facility. He was on the Technical Committee from 2014 to 2018, and serves on the Test Methods Committee since 2019.

Weihong Lang

Weihong Lang is the Director of Technology at Mayzo, Inc., a company providing custom solutions across a wide variety of applications for over 35 years. Weihong received her PhD in Polymer Chemistry at Sheffield University, UK. For more than 15 years she held senior research positions at chemical, tape and medical device industry and has gained extensive experience in organic and polymer synthesis, raw material and formulation development, as well as chemical characterization. She has 13 US patents and 5 publications.

Tim Mitchell

Tim Mitchell is a Senior Research Scientist at Dow Chemical.  He main role is product development within the Pressure Sensitive Industries group of Dow Consumer Solutions.  Tim holds a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Michigan – Flint.  He has been employed at Dow (Corning) for over twenty-eight years and in that time has worked on the development of silicone PSAs, silicone release coatings, silicone-acrylate hybrid PSAs, and acrylate PSA technologies.

Cathy Stewart

Diana Proffit

Diana Proffit is a Technical Service & Development Scientist supporting Pressure Sensitive Industries business at Dow. She supports both innovation and maintenance of current business in silicone release coatings and silicone pressure sensitive adhesives. Prior to the TS&D role, she held positions in research and product development. Diana joined Dow (Corning) in 2011. Diana holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering from Northwestern University and a B.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from North Carolina State University. She is based in Midland, MI.