Waterborne Review
Kerry Pianoforte, Editor
The School of Polymers and High Performance Materials at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) held its 43rd Annual International Waterborne, High-Solids and
Powder Coatings Symposium February 1-5 in New Orleans,
Louisiana. The Waterborne Symposium is a technical forum
for environmentally friendly coatings technologies. Proceeds
from the symposium are used by USM for various elements of
academic program development including junior faculty devel-
opment, graduate student stipends, equipment acquisition and
maintenance, and especially scholarships for undergraduate
students majoring in Polymer Science. Most of these students
enter the coatings or related polymer industries upon gradua-
tion. These scholarships are key to USM’s efforts to recruit the
highest-achieving students into their Polymer program.
This year’s event had 352 attendees and featured 47 talks
organized into seven sessions related to various aspects of surface coatings: waterborne, nanotube, bio based, corrosion, academia, additives and general.
“This year’s Symposium is our best year since 2001,” noted
Dr. Robson Storey, USM professor and Symposium chair. “The
Symposium is growing steadily.”
Plenary Speaker, Keynote Address and
Sidney Lauren Memorial Lecture
The opening session commenced with plenary speaker, Kurt
Olson, Fellow, Coatings Research and Development at PPG
This annual event featured 47 presentations on a variety of topics related to surface
coatings including waterborne, additives, pigments and emerging technologies.
The 43rd Annual
Waterborne Symposium
Expert panel participants: Diane Stewart, senior scientist at DAP, James Bodwell,
senior principal scientist at Avery Dennison, Dennis Lay, vice president R&D at
Rust-Oleum and moderator, Dale Pritchett, publisher of Coatings World.
