Fargo, N.D. – The American Coatings Association (ACA) announced that Dr. Stuart G. Croll, chair of the Department of Coatings and Polymeric Materials at North Dakota State University, Fargo, will deliver the Mattiello Memorial Lecture at its American Coatings Conference, May 7-9, 2012, in Indianapolis, Ind., in conjunction with the American Coatings Show, May 8-10. The Joseph J. Mattiello Lecture Award is designed to recognize an individual who has made outstanding contributions to science, technology, and/or engineering related to the coatings industry.

Dr. Croll joined the faculty of the Department of Coatings and Polymeric Materials at North Dakota State University in 2000, becoming the Chair of the department in 2006.  Prior to joining North Dakota State University, Dr. Croll worked in R&D at Millennium Inorganic Chemicals, concerned with many of the aspects of titanium dioxide pigments.

As a faculty member at NDSU, he teaches courses on coatings materials science including film formation, color and appearance, coating and polymer characterization, and polymer physical properties. His research interests include the durability of polymers and coatings, adhesion, corrosion protection, bio-based materials, and art conservation.

Dr. Croll earned a degree in physics from the University of London (UK), and completed a doctorate degree in polymer physics at the University of Leeds (UK). He worked in England, and later moved to the Division of Building Research in the National Research Council Canada, where he first worked on coatings. After periods in the construction chemicals and telecommunication cable industries, he moved into the coatings industry with The Sherwin-Williams Company, where he worked on a wide range of R&D and troubleshooting projects, including those involving film formation, application rheology, weathering durability, adhesion, dispersion stability, and polymer characterization.

Dr. Croll is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, and the Institute of Physics (in the UK). He is a member of the editorial review board of Progress in Organic Coatings and ACA’s Journal of Coatings Technology and Research. Dr. Croll has published articles in the coatings, polymers, mechanics, and corrosion literature, has presented papers at many meetings and symposia, and has been an instructor in short courses given to a variety of audiences.

The leading scientific event for the coatings industry, the American Coatings Conference provides a world-class, high-level technical and research forum, rallying leading industry experts from coatings manufacturers, their suppliers, universities, and government partners across the nation and beyond.  More than 6,100 participants from 61 countries attended the previous conference in 2010.
The American Coatings Association (ACA), co-host of the American Coatings Conference and Show, is a voluntary, nonprofit trade association working to advance the needs of the paint and coatings industry and the professionals who work in it.

North Dakota State University, Fargo, is notably listed among the nation’s top 108 public and private universities in the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education’s elite category of “Research Universities/Very High Research Activity.” As a student-focused, land grant, research institution with more than 14,000 students, NDSU is listed in the top 40 research universities in the U.S. without a medical school, based on research expenditures reported to the National Science Foundation. At the 55-acre NDSU Research & Technology Park, faculty, staff and students work with private sector researchers on leading-edge projects.  www.ndsu.edu/research