Wadood Y. Hamad, Ph.D.
Feb. 10, 2025 - TAPPI announced that Wadood Y. Hamad, Ph.D., TAPPI Fellow, has been named winner of the prestigious Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal Award. Dr. Hamad is Chief Technology Officer at Seprify AG (Switzerland), where he leads efforts to scale-up the production of cellulose particles and hybrid materials, including a flagship product, cellulose white pigment, and develop applications in a multitude of sectors spanning foods, pharma/nutraceuticals, cosmetics, paints, coatings and organic electronics.
"Dr. Hamad's work has made a tremendous impact in colloid science, materials physics, chemistry and nanotechnology," said TAPPI President and CEO Larry N. Montague. "His focus on advancing sustainable cellulose materials and structures embodies the true meaning of the Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal Award and we are excited to present this award to him at TAPPICon this year."
A TAPPI member since 2013, Dr. Hamad received the Distinguished Nanoscientist Award and FiberLean Industries Prize from TAPPI's Nanotechnology Division in 2018. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), and the Institute of Materials, Mining and Metallurgy (UK). In 2018, he was awarded the Tech21 visiting professorship at the Université Grenoble Alpes (France), and in 2022, he received the Research Innovation Award for his work on Piezoelectric Sensors based on Cellulose Nanocrystal from intelliFLEX and the Canadian Printed and Flexible Electronics Symposium (CPES).
His work includes 33 patents and 150+ peer-reviewed book chapters, scientific papers, and authoritative reviews. Dr. Hamad is the author of two seminal monographs, Cellulosic Materials: Fibers, Networks and Composites (Kluwer Academic, 2002) and Cellulose Nanocrystals: Properties, Production and Applications (Wiley, 2017). A forthcoming monograph, Bio-derived Electronic and Photonic Materials: Cellulose Nanocrystals and Beyond, will be published by Wiley in 2026.
The award will be presented at TAPPICon, May 4-7, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
First presented in 1985, the prestigious Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal Award is TAPPI's highest technical honor in recognition of an individual's exceptional industry contributions. It is presented annually only if the individual has made preeminent scientific and engineering achievements of proven commercial benefit to the world's pulp, paper, board, and forest products industries including forestry, derived products, their process technologies, and their applications.
TAPPI is the leading association for the worldwide packaging, paper, pulp, tissue and converting industries. TAPPI celebrates 110 years of service in 2025 for the forest products industry with a series of special events throughout the year.
SOURCE: TAPPI
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