PFI: A Multinational Partnership to Incite Innovation via New Generation Tailored Polymers for Interfaces

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This Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) project--a Type III (A:C) partnership between University of Southern Mississippi (USM) an NSF PFI graduated grantee (0227827), and Jones County Junior College (JCJC) (Laurel, MS), an institution new to the PFI Program (defined as one that has never been a PFI grantee)--focuses on the processes for creating new polymers and in doing so represents an opportunity to raise awareness and acceptance of high-throughput experimentation into the mainstream of industrial chemistry. In addition students will be exposed to the range of companies that use such techniques internationally. The proposal selects a specific focus; namely, polymeric/surface interactions important for delivery and control of active ingredients in consumer products that can bear the high cost of functionally tuned specialty polymers. If successful, the proposed activity will introduce new concepts and tools that will accelerate the rate of discovery. The members of this large multidisciplinary team, which collectively brings substantial resources to this major effort, are at the frontiers of their respective areas and the resulting collaboration will yield results that should advance scientific understanding as well as increase commercial intelligence.The project is aimed directly at bottlenecks in discovery, innovation and commercialization. The proposed team will be partnered with world-leading companies which will implement the successes of the project. By advancing high throughput experimentation, the route to discovery will be accelerated and by linking with large multinational companies, commercialization of entrepreneurial innovations will be sped to market by the global logistics of the multinational corporations. The proposed activity will prepare the advanced workforce that will be necessary to master the concepts, the skills, and the new tools. The attention that the proposers have paid to the education and development of that workforce should yield rich dividends, and the lessons learned will be publicized broadly and are likely to be relevant to other industries and other ventures.Partners at the inception of the project are Academic Institutions: University of Southern Mississippi (lead institution), Jones Country Junior College, Louisiana Tech University, Petal High School, State Board of Community and Junior Colleges, and University of Mississippi; Private Sector Organizations: Ablitec Technologies; Amerchol Division of Dow Chemical; BASF; Business Launchpoint; Chemspeed Technologies USA and Switzerland, DSM Nutritional Products-USA, Holland, and Switzerland; Glactech; Glaxo Smith Kline; Hub City Technologies; Hybrid Plastics; Johnson and Johnson; MBM Tech; Mississippi Power; Scigenesis; The Procter & Gamble Company; and Trechem; and Local Government Organizations: Areas Development Partnership, Mississippi Development Authority, and Mississippi Technology Alliance.