Wood Science Faculty, Students to be Honored

University of Maine professor of forest resources Doug Gardner will officially become a fellow of the Society of Wood Science and Technology (SWST) and other UMaine faculty members and students will be honored for their work this week at the SWST meeting in Beijing, China.

SWST recognizes fellows for their significant contributions to the wood science and technology profession and to the society. Gardner, who is traveling to Beijing for the meeting, is a faculty member of UMaine’s Forest Bioproducts Research Institute (FBRI) and is past president of SWST. His research interests include wood/paper surface chemistry, wood-polymer composites, analytical chemistry, cellulose nanocomposites, extrusion and wood adhesion. He has a bachelor’s degree from UMaine.

Former UMaine graduate student Rastislav Lagana and former researcher Lech Muszynski and current faculty members William Davids and Stephen Shaler won first place George Marra Award for Excellence in Writing for their paper, “Moment-Curvature Analysis of Coupled Bending and Mechanosorptive Response of Red Spruce Beams.”

Gardner, along with former UMaine engineering and business graduate student and Advanced Structures and Composites Center program manager Jacques Nader, and current FBRI researcher Han-Seung Yang, won third place in the writing awards for their paper, “Mechanical Properties of Cellulose Nanofibril-Filled Polypropylene Composites.”

Contact: Jessica Bloch, (207) 581-3777