Judit E. Puskas

Dr.
The University of Akron
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
264 Wolf Ledges Parkway
Room No. 310
Akron, OH
USA 44308
Email: jpuskas@uakron.edu

Biographical Sketch: Dr. Puskas received a PhD in plastics and rubber technology in 1985, and an M. E. Sc in organic and biochemical engineering in 1977, from the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary. Her advisors were Professors Ferenc Tüdös and Tibor Kelen of Hungary, and Professor Joseph P. Kennedy at the University of Akron, Ohio, USA, in the framework of collaboration between the National Science Foundation of the USA and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She started her academic career in 1996. Before that she was involved in polymer research and development in the microelectronic, paint and rubber industries. Her present interests include the integration of breast reconstruction and cancer research, green polymer chemistry, biomimetic processes and biomaterials, living/controlled polymerizations, polymerization mechanisms and kinetics, thermoplastic elastomers and polymer structure/property relationships, and probing the polymer-bio interface. She is one of the editors of the new Interdisciplinary Reviews in Nanomedicine and NanoBiotechnology WIRE, Published by Wiley-Blackwell, and a member of the Advisory Board, of the European Polymer Journal. Until July of 2008 she was one of the two regional Editors with the highest citation index. She was also member of the IUPAC Working Party IV.2.1 "Structure-property relationships of commercial polymers". Puskas has been published in more than 370 publications, including technical reports, is an inventor or co-inventor of 31 U.S. patents and applications, and has been Chair or organizer of a number of international conferences. Puskas has been awarded her first NIH grant (the first ever in the Department of Polymer Science) in 2010, and has had 7 NSF Grants since 2005, including a Special Creativity Extension in 2013. She is the recipient of several awards, including the 1999 PEO (Professional Engineers of Ontario, Canada) Medal in Research&Development, a 2000 Premier's Research Excellence Award, the 2004 Mercator Professorship Award from the DFG (Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, German Research Foundation), the LANXESS (previously Bayer) Industrial Chair 1998-2008, and the 2009 “Chemistry of Thermoplastic Elastomers” Award of the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society, the Woman of Achievement Award, the Arpad Medal from the Arpad Academy of the American Hungarian Association and she was finalist for the Athena Awards. In 2014 she was named the Joseph M. Gingo Chair. She was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering AIMBE in 2011, and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry IUPAC in 2013. In 2012 she was one of the five winners of the GE Healthymagination Breast Cancer Challenge Award, selected from 400 international applications. Her research is now focusing on the integration of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment with breast reconstruction. She and her business partners received a Phase II SBIR grant from NSF to demonstrate the effectiveness of her polymeric diagnostic agents, in collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic. Her Center of Advanced Elastomers for Healthcare, supported by the Rubber Division of ACS and the Breast Cancer Innovation Foundation, also received an NSF grant helping her commercialization efforts. Professor Puskas has raised over $4 million for research in Canada, and over $10 million since joining the University of Akron. As a coinventor of the polymer used on the Taxus® coronary stent, Puskas helped the University of Akron generate more than $5 million in license fees.

Papers:
C-1 Electrospinning Polyisobutylene-Based Rubbery Fiber Mats P-1 Green Polymer Chemistry: Synthesis and Characterization of POLY(alpha-LIPOIC ACID) P-2 NOVEL UV-Curable Rubbers P-6 Folate Targeted Imaging Agent for Cancer Diagnostic Application through Thermoplastic Elastomeric Fiber Mat