Patrick Ellis has over 60 years experience in the global plastics and rubber industries, where he has worked for a number of multinational polymer producers, including Shell Chemicals, General Electric Plastics, Monsanto Europe, Hercules Europe, Himont, Neste Chemicals and RTP Company. He has been an independent consultant for the last 28 years and has carried out a number of projects for major multinational concerns, such as ExxonMobil, Amoco and General Electric Plastics, as well as European compounders such as Dub Plastiques, British Vita, Polytechs, AlphaGary, Polyplast Mueller, Avient and RTP France.
In addition to the above Patrick Ellis has assisted in the setting up of several compounding operations. He has completed a number of global market studies for Smithers on TPEs and silicone elastomers. He has also written several articles as well as having given presentations on TPEs and silicone elastomers for Smithers.
Dr. Pierre Furtwengler joined Renault engineering team in 2018 and is in charge of polymer material development and prescription for under bonnet applications. He is know technical polymer specialist for Renault Group. He obtained his PhD at ECPM (Strasbourg) in the BioTeam in renewable polyol synthesis from sorbitol and PU foams formulation. He received the 2018 best PhD award from French Plastic Engineer Society (SFIP).
Dr. Krishna Venkataswamy is the President & CEO of Innovation Development Insights, which is a multidisciplinary global consulting company with experienced senior executives and technologists as associates. The mission of the company is to help clients manufacturing products with organic growth through product innovation, product development, commercial and operational excellence as well through partnerships.
Dr. Krishna Venkataswamy serves on the Board of Directors of Vivify Inc, Glendale Heights, Ill, backed by one of top US private equity company. In addition, he is on the Executive Board of Zylog Elastocomp, a Pune, India based privately held company for three and half years. Krishna served as an Executive Vice President at Star Thermoplastics and Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer at Interphase Performance Materials.
Dr. Krishna Venkataswamy was a Senior/Executive Global Technology Director at PolyOne and GLS Corporations for sixteen years. Krishna started his career in thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) thirty-four years ago. He was a Research Specialist at Monsanto Chemical Company in the Santoprene business at its infancy. Krishna later held several technical and technical management positions at Advanced Elastomer Systems (Joint Venture of Exxon and Monsanto) and GAF Materials Corporation.
• Bachelor in applied chemistry at Reutlingen University and Master of plastics engineering (M.Eng) at Schmalkalden University.
• Professional career start at B.Braun Melsungen AG in the Material Science Department
• Senior materials expert, development of PVC and TPE formulations for medical tubing and components
• Foundation of the consultancy company Polyneers GmbH that is focused on medical polymers and its applications, trends and characterization techniques.
• Member of the VDI-committee for the upcoming guideline 2023 for process validation in the medical industry.
• From 2016 until 2020 he contributed to part 18 of DIN EN ISO 10993 – the standard for biocompatibility of medical devices within a risk management.
Rubber and TPE expert with 25+ years of experience
1997-2022 Editor Dr. Gupta Verlag (focus on thermoplastic elastomers, rubber, and polyurethanes)
2009-2022 Editor-in-Chief TPE Magazine
2023 – today Communication specialist and TPE network associate at the German Rubber Manufacturers’ Association (wdk Wirtschaftsverband der deutschen Kautschukindustrie e.V.)
• Member of the VDI Strategy Group Plastics Technology
• Member of the jury of the SPE Central Europe Automotive Awards
Associations:
• TPE Forum
• Forum Werkstoffe
• German Rubber Society (DKG)
• Association of German Engineers (VDI)
• ACS Rubber Division
• Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE)
Professor Stefan Roth graduated from Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany, with a degree in Plastics Technology, and a PhD for his thesis entitled "Electromagnetic Shielding by steel fibre filled compounds“.
In 2007, he joined B.Braun Melsungen AG, a global medical device manufacturer and started in R&D of infusion systems by managing projects in development of infusion pumps.
Since 2010, he built up and was heading the Materials Science group within Pre-Development / Technical Laboratories. His working fields were plastics for medical disposables and pumps, formula development and refinement, polymer testing and analysis.
In 2017 he has moved his position and has become Professor for product development and design at the University of Applied Sciences Schmalkalden, Germany. His fields of research are plastics in medical applications and additive manufacturing. He is part of the laboratory for applied plastics technology (AKT).
Stefan Roth is chairman of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) committee “plastics in medical” that has been initiated the development of the new VDI guideline “medical grade plastics”. In its function as chairman of the guideline committee, he worked out this new guideline together with his colleague Prof. Thomas Seul and members of various partners of polymer and medical industry.
