The Cooperative Research Award in Polymer Science and Engineering recognizes the cooperative research among industrial, academic, and national laboratory scientists. The research team of Dr. Joseph Thrasher (Clemson University), Dr. Chadron Friesen (Trinity Western University), and Dr. Jon Howell (E.I. DuPont du Nemours and Co. Inc. and Chemours Inc., Retired) is the winner of the 2026 Cooperative Research Award.
For more than two decades, focused, collaborative research efforts from this team has contributed significantly to the fundamental understanding, practical synthesis, and translation to commercial products of perfluoropolyalkylethers (PFPAEs) or perfluoropolyethers (PFPEs) as advanced fluoropolymer lubricant technology for high-temperature use. The team has collectively been granted multiple patents (11 issued patents and 6 pending patents) in the United States, Europe, China, Japan, and Korea as well as documented their work in numerous high-impact publications, including seminal papers in prestigious journals such as Macromolecules, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, and the Journal of Fluorine Chemistry. Their innovative approach has been commercialized with the Krytox™ brand of high temperature oils, greases, and lubricants from DuPont and then Chemours; the aerospace and electronics industries have been impacted by the development of these fluoropolymers with their adoption for applications in high-stress, high-temperature environments. The sustained research program has provided a collaborative and innovative framework for the career growth of numerous students, interns, and postdocs, and their continued research promises to yield even more groundbreaking results in the future.
