2019 Management Award

The Management Division has selected Dr. Cristina Thomas as the 2019 Management Award recipient. She will present on a topic of importance to chemical engineers in a Keynote Session at the 2019 Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Thomas is currently the manager of Corporate R&D Services Center at 3M. As manager, Thomas is the Senior Technical Leader and R&D Global Process Owner reporting to Dr. John Banovetz, Senior R&D Vice President/CTO. She has over 27 years of service with 3M starting as a Senior Research Engineer after receiving a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. Thomas advanced through R&D Management positions involving six sigma, technology development, safety and security research and development, commercialization management, strategic planning, and global application development. She holds several patents and has given numerous presentations and published extensively.

Dr. Thomas’ professional society memberships include AIChE, ACS, SWE and SHPE serving in a variety of leadership positions. Her work in the community includes science encouragement programs (e.g., STEP), Big Brothers/Sisters, and 3M/UMASS University Relations Team, University of Wisconsin Industrial Advisory Board and more recently CHiMaD Technical Advisory Board. At 3M, she has been active in Tech Forum, SWE@3M, the former Multicultural Advisory Committee and the Women’s Leadership Forum. As an active senior member of AIChE, Dr. Thomas is chair of the Women In Chemical Engineering Committee (WIC) 2019 Spring Programming, member of the WIC Award Sub-team and was involved with planning and execution of the 2017 Annual Meeting.