Smith, Paul, Prof. Dr.

Curriculum Vitae

Paul Smith has been full Professor of Polymer Technology at the Department of Materials Science at ETH Zurich since 1995.

He was born in the Netherlands, where he received academic degrees in chemical engineering and polymer science in 1976 at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. After a post-doctoral fellowship at McGill University, Montreal, he joined the Central Laboratory of the Dutch chemical company DSM. In 1982 he became senior research chemist of the Central Research & Development Department at the Experimental Station of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, Inc. in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. Subsequently, he was appointed full Professor of Materials and Professor of Chemical & Nuclear Engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara in the Materials Department and Department of Chemical & Nuclear Engineering. During his stay in Santa Barbara, he co-founded the high-tech company UNIAX Corporation, where he was director of research and chief scientist.

He is an active member of a number of boards of scientific publications, including the editorial board of "POLYMER", since 1986 and the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

He received various awards for his work in oriented polymers, i.e. the gold medal of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society, the Award for Distinguished Achievement from The Fiber Society, USA and a fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, and jointly with Prof. P. J. Lemstra, the Wallace H. Carothers Medal from The Textile Institute Recently, he was elected as Corresponding Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.

His fields of research include processing of polymers materials, polymer phase behavior, high-performance polymer systems, electrically and optically active polymers. Paul Smith is co-author of approximately 180 scientific papers and book chapters and co-inventor of about 30 patents in the areas of high-performance polymers, orientation processes, conducting polymers and fluoropolymers.