Ronald Kander, PhD

• Mayor's Appointee to the Philadelphia Manufacturing Task Force Advisory Committee
• Governor’s Appointee to the Virginia New College Planning Commission
• Governor’s Appointee to the Virginia Hydrogen Economy Roundtable
• Governor’s Appointee to the Virginia Geographic Information Network Advisory Board
• Invited speaker at three different Gordon Conference on Engineering Education, Thermoset Polymers and Composite Materials
• Recipient of the Virginia Tech Diggs Teaching Scholar Award
• Inductee into the VT Academy of Teaching Excellence
• Recipient of the VT William E. Wine Award for Teaching Excellence
• Recipient of the VT Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching
• Recipient of the VT College of Engineering "Sporn Award" for Excellence in Teaching
• Recipient of the DuPont Director's Award for outstanding contribution to the Textile Fibers Department

Dr. Kander's research is in the areas of materials selection & design, systems dynamics, modeling and simulation, composite materials characterization and manufacturing, polymer characterization and processing, and sustainable manufacturing processes.

He has supervised more than 30 graduate students (PhD and MS), published more than 50 articles, book chapters, and refereed conference papers, and presented more than 75 invited lectures and conference presentations (including two invited Gordon Conference presentations). His work has been cited in the literature more than 200 times. Dr. Kander has secured in excess of $6 million dollars in funded research, approximately half of which was from industrial sources. In addition to these research activities, I also remain active in industrial consulting and in teaching industry short courses.

Before joining Thomas Jefferson University in 2011, Dr. Kander was founding Director of the School of Engineering at James Madison University (JMU), Department Head of Integrated Science & Technology at JMU, and a faculty member in the Materials Science & Engineering Department (MSE) at Virginia Tech (VT). While at VT, he was also the Director of the College of Engineering’s interdisciplinary “Green Engineering” program. Before joining academia, he was employed by E. I. DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware as a Senior Engineer in the Advanced Composites Division of the Fibers Department and in the Polymer Physics Group of the Central Research Department.

Industrial Hemp Materials, Processes, & Products