This year IPST celebrates ten years as an industrial research center at Georgia Tech.  Founded in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1929, the Institute moved to Atlanta in 1989, relocated to the Paper Tricentennial Building in 1993, and merged with Georgia Tech in 2003.

In accordance with the merger agreements, a tenth-year review is under way.  A review team meeting occurred August 20-21 at IPST.  The review was commissioned not only to evaluate performance against the merger agreements, but also “to develop actionable recommendations on how to further enhance IPST’s contributions to the forest-based industries of the United States.” The informal finding of the review team is that all milestones have been met and that IPST’s progress in the last five years has been excellent.  The formal report is due in October.

Jim Ferris, currently vice president of the Institute of Paper Chemistry Foundation (IPC was IPST’s predecessor) and formerly a vice president of Weyerhaeuser, commissioned the review on behalf of the Foundation.

John Hanby, an alumnus of both Georgia Tech and the Institute of Paper Chemistry, led the review panel.  John recently served as executive director of the Washington Pulp and Paper Foundation at the University of Washington, and was formerly VP-technology at Potlatch Corporation and VP-technology at James River Corporation. 

Other members of the review team include Dean Benjamin of New Page, Beth Cormier of SAPPI, Dan Floyd of Renmatix, Gopal Goyal of International Paper Company, Phil Jones of Imerys, 
Bruno Marcoccia of Domtar, and Ron Rousseau.  Professor Rousseau recently retired as chair of the School of Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech and formerly served as acting director of IPST.  Serving as resources to the review team were IPST director Norman Marsolan and his staff, especially IPST business operations manager Lloyd Williams, administrative manager Lavon Harper, and consultant Kathleen Bennett.

John Hanby and his team designed a process to gather input from industry representation, from team members and from twenty stakeholder interviews.  The team also elicited considerable input from Georgia Tech academic and research leadership and faculty.  Executive Vice President-Research Steve Cross, Georgia Tech, attended throughout.  An afternoon session considering IPST’s profile as an Interdisciplinary Research Institute and its opportunities was attended by Vice-Provost Susan Cozzens and the Chairs of IPST’s four participating schools—Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering.  These four school chairs are highlighted later in this edition of the IPST News.  Twenty faculty members joined in a discussion of “The Future Promise of IPST.”   For the closing session, IPC Foundation president George Lanier and vice president Jim Ferris joined the team and the deans and associate deans of the Colleges of Engineering and Science, along with Vice-Provost Cozzens. 

Several Georgia Tech leaders commented that IPST is a model for other interdisciplinary research institutes on campus for its outreach and close ties to the industry, its interdisciplinary research, and its graduate education program.