Dr. Skip Rochefort is currently an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering in the School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering
Background Stuff
Skip was born and raised in Woonsocket, RI, a small French-Canadian mill town. He spoke French before English. He loves all sports, even curling and as youngster thought he could be either a professional basketball player (too short) or pitcher (too slow)! He found his best sport in the long-distance running craze of the early 1970s. He wasn’t fast but he could go a long way! He was an avid runner for 45 years completing > 250 10K and ½ marathons, 35+ marathons (NYC, Boston, San Fran, Paris, etc), several 50K, and one 50 mile race on Catalina Island.
His longest consecutive day running streak was 1290 days (3 ½ yrs minimum 5k per day). He has a passion for K-12 Outreach and getting young people interested in Engineering. He was the Director of OSU Precollege Programs for 16 years. (2003-2019). In 1997 he established the Summer Experience in Science for Youth (SESEY) that has served over 1200 HS students in the past 25 years, has had a middle school engineering camp (ECamp) since 2005, and since 2001 has organized (with his friend in Chemistry Margie Haak) Family Science and Engineering Nights (FSEN) where they visit 15-18 Elementary Schools per academic year.
At OSU he is an Honors College faculty member and has been the Faculty Advisor for the CBEE Student Club since he arrived at OSU in Fall 1993. He loves polymers and has worked in the field since his junior year of college in 1975. He has mentored over 150 UG students and 100 HS students in polymers-based research.
Professional Stuff
Skip Rochefort has degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts (B.S., 1976), Northwestern University (M.S. 1978) and the University of California, San Diego (Ph.D., 1986). He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Ecole the Physique et Chimie (ESPCI) in Paris, France in 1986-87 where he worked in the laboratory of Pierre-Gilles deGennes (1991 Nobel Prize in Physics). From 1988 – 1990 he was a Research Assistant at UC Santa Barbara where he worked in the laboratory of Dale Pearson and Alan Heeger (1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry).
He has held several industrial research positions (Dow Chemical, Kodak, AT&T Bell Labs), and since 1993 he has been on the faculty at Oregon State University. He has been a University Honors College Faculty member since 1995 and a UHC Eminent Professor since 2012. He has been recognized for his teaching and advising activities by ASEE, AIChE, the College of Engineering, and Oregon State University. In 2012 he was selected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. His research interest for the last 45 years has been in all areas of polymer science, polymer physics, rheology, and polymer processing.
He established the CBEE Polymer Research Laboratory in 1993 with complete capabilities for molecular, thermal, rheological, and surface characterization of polymers. He has been involved in plastics recycling for more than 30 years, been involved with the plastics to fuel technology for 15 years, and in Spring 2018 established the OSU Plastics to Fuel research effort with undergraduate students in CBEE. He is a on the Advisory Board of Clean Oceans International (Santa Cruz, CA) and for the last several years has had collaborative research with Scott Farling and Capt. Andy Schroeder, founders of the Ocean Plastics Recovery Project (Kodiak, AK). Skip’s real passion is K-12 outreach, teaching, and research with students of all ages.