Laurent Matuana, associate professor in the MSU School of Packaging, has been elected a fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers.
SPE is an international society providing educational and networking opportunities and research support to professionals and academics in the plastics industry.
Matuana is internationally known for his work blending biobased materials with plastics. His efforts to add value to underutilized wood species yielded an entirely new class of materials—wood-plastic composites—that has become widely used in the construction and automotive industries. He also is recognized for his related work developing microcellular foam materials.
An MSU faculty member since 2002, Matuana has worked with wood-plastic composite materials for 17 years, beginning with his work as a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto. Since then, he has gone on to hold five patents for wood-plastic composite technologies and has contributed to more than 80 studies on the subject.