John Klier

John Klier, Ph.D., joined OU in July of 2020 where he serves as Dean of the Gallogly College of Engineering and professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering. He joined OU from UMass Amherst where he served as professor and department head of Chemical Engineering for 5 years. 

Previously he spent 25 years at The Dow Chemical Company in technology and technical management roles. Managerial responsibilities included leading Core R&D materials-related organizations, Dow Coating Materials research and development organization, and most recently the Performance Materials and Chemicals divisional research, development and technical service organizations. In 2014 he was named Distinguished Fellow, the highest technical position at Dow.

Klier is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Inventors and several professional organizations. Students and postdoctoral associates in the Klier group combine surfactant and functional polymer assembly and association phenomena with state of the art processing technologies to produce new structured polymer, hybrid and colloidal materials. They are applying these materials to address key application needs in collaboration with industrial, agency and governmental partners.

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Novel materials for high performance coatings and adhesives: Functional and reactive waterborne polymer colloids for very high performance waterbased coatings, reactive powder coatings for high performance zero VOC coating systems and high performance adhesive films for low energy substrates.
• Structured polymer colloids and emulsion polymers: Asymmetric, hollow, gel-core, reactive, hybrid core shell, associative and functional polymer colloids and emulsion polymers for coating, adhesive, consumer product and biomedical applications.
• New approaches to polymer crosslinking: Chemical crosslinking induced by mechanical stress for novel gels, pressure sensitive adhesives, fibers and films.
• Control of functional oligomer / polymer colloid association: Association structures with controlled surface functionality to enhance colloidal and solid state properties.
• Applications of Functional Colloids to targeted drug delivery
• Properties of Novel Functional Monomers
• Novel Degradable and Recyclable Polymers