Dr. Rosemarie D. Wesson joined the Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a Visiting Scientist/Engineer on leave from The Dow Chemical Company. During her tenure at NSF she has held numerous Director positions, including Acting Director for the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) Program and Acting Senior Advisor for Emerging Technologies and Interdisciplinary Research. She is currently Program Director for the Chemical and Biological Separations Program at NSF and also an adjunct professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Wesson was a Senior Research Leader in Dow Chemical Company’s Corporate Materials Science R&D. Dr. Wesson’s responsibilities included supervision and leadership in the polymer rheology research arena. Her background is chemical engineering with an emphasis on polymer rheology and processing. Dr. Wesson received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her M.S. and Ph.D., both in Chemical Engineering, from The University of Michigan. Dr. Wesson is a registered Professional Engineer.
Dr. Wesson has also worked in academia as a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA. She has authored or co-authored numerous technical papers in the area of numerical analyses of polymer crystallization kinetics, structure property relationships of crystalline materials, and finite-element analyses of polymeric flows. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in numerical methods, heat transfer, and polymer rheology.
Dr. Wesson is one of the few female Fellows of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and currently serves on the Board of Directors. She is also a member of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).