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Dr. Sadhan C. Jana
Department Chair and Professor of Polymer Engineering

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the web page of the Department of Polymer Engineering at The University of Akron. Our Department is one of the largest in the U.S. and quite possibly in the world dedicated to polymer education and polymer processing research. It has a long standing history of providing a first rated polymer education to undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students and a track record for state-of-the art research on novel polymeric materials, processing technology, and characterization methods.

The Department was founded in the early 1980’s by Prof. James L. White and since then has grown into its current strength of 12 fulltime faculty members, close to 100 graduate students, and approximately 20 undergraduate students. The Department is presently housed in two buildings, the new 30,000 sq. ft. Polymer Engineering Academic Center and the 70,000 sq. ft. Olson Research Center. Our faculty is recognized worldwide for their contributions to polymer research and education. Many on our faculty have won prestigious national and international awards, for example, the Bingham Medal, Vinogradov Prize, Melvin Mooney Medal, and Ho-Am Prize, and have received recognition from federal funding agencies in the form of NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award and NSF Faculty Early CAREER Award and from The University of Akron in the form of Distinguished Professorship and Outstanding Researcher Awards. Some faculty members have served as presidents of professional societies and authored texts and reference books.

The Department awards each year on an average 20 Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Polymer Engineering and 15 B.S. degrees in Mechanical-Polymer Engineering. Our graduates are spread all around the globe and have established themselves at academic institutions, in government agencies, and at industrial and federal laboratories.

Please visit other parts of our website for more information on academics, admissions procedures, individual faculty and their research, course offerings, alumni and much more. Thank you for visiting the Department of Polymer Engineering.

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