Dr. Lawrence Drzal is SPE Automotive Lifetime Achievement Awardee for 2016

Dr. Lawrence T. Drzal, university distinguished professor of Chemical Engineering and director-Composite Materials and Structures Center at Michigan State University's College of Engineering (MSU, East Lansing, Mich., U.S.A.), has been named the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award winner by the Automotive Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE®).

Dr. Drzal is the first academic winner of the award. He is a composites expert who has specialized in surface and interfacial aspects of adhesively bonded joints plus the fiber / matrix interphase in composite materials and their processing; adhesion fundamentals; sustainable bio-based structural composite materials; and nanocomposite materials. During his career Dr. Drzal has given over 400 invited presentations at national and international conferences, published over 375 research papers, and has been awarded 35 patents. He will be honored for his role leading transportation composites innovations at the 46th-annual Automotive Innovation Awards Gala on November 9, 2016 at Burton Manor in Livonia, Mich.

First given in 2000, the SPE Automotive Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes the technical achievements of individuals whose work – in research, design, and/or engineering – has led to significant integration of polymeric materials on passenger vehicles.  

Dr. Drzal credits his early engineering and co-op training coupled with his industrial and military service for his "problem-definition approach to research, which has been characterized by observation of phenomena and identification of unresolved problems with common themes around technological advancement, sustainability, environmental friendliness, and benefit to society." As a result, he  says he always has had the desire to provide both practical knowledge and fundamental knowledge in each research area and the research project he and his students have undertaken.

He is a founding member of both the Adhesion Society and the American Society for Composites and has served as president (1998-1999) of the Adhesion Society. He has chaired the Gordon Conference on Adhesion and the Gordon Conference on Composites and has served in many other professional activities related to chemical engineering, composite materials, and adhesion. He served on the editorial board of journals in the adhesion and composite materials fields (Composites Part A:  Applied Science and Manufacturing; Journal of Biobased Materials and Bioenergy; Carbon Letters; and Nanocomposites) and was associate editor of the Journal of Adhesion.

Dr. Drzal earned a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Detroit and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and Polymer Science from Case Western Reserve University. He joined MSU's College of Engineering as a professor of Chemical Engineering in 1985 and became director of the school's Composite Materials & Structures Center in 1986. A decade later, he became a university distinguished professor of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science.

SPE’s Automotive Innovation Awards Program is the oldest and largest competition of its kind in the world. Dozens of teams made up of OEMs, tier suppliers, and polymer producers submit nominations describing their part, system, or complete vehicle and why it merits the claim as the Year’s Most Innovative Use of Plastics.