A $10,000 prize went to Jie Wu, who won the innovation prize in the category for his project, “Highly-Scattering, Nanostructured Optical Coatings for Sustainable Paper and Paperboard Products”.

IPST Associate Director Marko Hakovirta led the introduction of the new forest bioeconomy category in the GTRIC competition and also congratulated the winners. The Institute of Paper Chemistry Foundation supports the research mission of IPST as well as advancing the Paper Science and Engineering educational program at Georgia Tech.The prizes were selected from among some 400 competition entries, of which a third was submitted in the forest bioeconomy category.  Professor Sujit Banerjee presented the awards on behalf of the Foundation.  “The Institute of Paper Chemistry Foundation congratulates all participants in the competition,” commented Dr. Banerjee.  “I am personally pleased to award these prizes. Congratulations for a job well done.”The Foundation also awarded $5,000 prizes for poster prresentations to Yan Li for “Microstructure-based evaluation of material fracture toughness” and to John Copeland for “Interactions of Biomass Molecules with Heterogeneous Catalysts in Aqueous and Vacuum Environments”.