Dr Thomas W. Karjala is a Principal Research Scientist in the Process and Catalyst R&D organization of Packaging & Specialty Plastics and Hydrocarbons R&D at Dow. After receiving his undergraduate degree, Thomas joined General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin), working on aerospace materials and processes for several years. He then entered graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin where he joined the research group of Professor David M. Himmelbau, studying the use of machine learning for data reconciliation in the chemical process industries. Upon joining Dow, he initially focused on model-based control of polymerization reactors. Later, he expanded his expertise to encompass polyolefin polymerization modeling across solution, LDPE, and gas phase technologies for process and product development. Dr. Karjala has made significant contributions to the process development and commercialization of many polyolefin products in various markets including NORDEL™ EPDM, INDEX™ Interpolymers, VERSIFY™ Elastomers, INFUSE™ and INTUNE™ Olefin Block Copolymers, and ENGAGE™ PV Polyolefin Elastomers during his nearly 30-year tenure at Dow. In particular, he has applied polymer reaction engineering principles to scale up new catalysts and products from small scale batch reactors to pilot plants, and to world-scale commercial plants of up to 600 kt/y in size. He is one of the pioneers in commercializing polyolefin chain shuttling technology for which Dow won the 2015 Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award.
Dr Karjala received a MS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Technological University. During his career Thomas has authored over 218 internal reports, 77 patent disclosures, 24 patent applications, and 12 unique granted patents. He has also presented at major conferences and published 17 refereed journal articles and several conference papers. He is a member of both AIChE and IEEE.