NEW ORLEANS - The 39^th Annual Waterborne Symposium took place February 13-17, 2012 at the New Orleans Marriott, New Orleans, LA. The Waterborne 2012 Awards Ceremony, held in conjunction with the symposium, recognized the winners of the PCI Award for Technical Excellence, the Shelby F. Thames Best Paper Award and the Best Student Paper Award. Also recognized at the ceremony were winners of the student poster competition. 

The PCI Award for Technical Excellence was given to Matthew Linares, Evonik Degussa Corp., for his paper “Novel Matting Agent for Low Gloss UV Coatings.” Co-Authors were Hans-Dieter Christian, Reinhard Behl, Andreas Feller and Maria Nargiello.  

The Shelby F. Thames Best Paper Award was given to Jens Voepel, Ytkemiska Institute, YKI – Institute for Surface Chemistry, for the paper “Making Cleaner Surfaces.” The paper was co-authored by Anders Larsson. 

The Best Student Paper Award was given to Joshua Hanna for his paper “Tracking Steel Corrosion in Halide Solutions with a pH Stimuli Responsive Polymer." Dr. James Rawlins co-authored the paper. The award was presented by Jeff Smythe of the SSCT. All three student paper presenters received scores that were within two points of each. The other student papers were Bradley Sparks (Dr. Derek Patton) and James Goetz (Dr. Sergei Nazarenko). 

The student poster awards were presented by John Maddox of Eastman Chemical Co, sponsor of the awards. First place was awarded to Austin D. Baranek for the poster titled “Synthesis and Characterization of Cross-linked, Quaternary Ammonium Polybenzoxazines for Anion Exchange Membranes.” Co-authors were Jananee Narayanan, Ginger Tyson, Laken Kendrick and Derek L. Patton. Second place was awarded to Brooks Abel for the poster titled, “RAFT-ROMP Molecular Brushes for siRNA Delivery.” Third place was awarded to Emily A. Hoff–Patton for a paper titled “Photolabile Caged Thiols: Towards One-Pot Postmodification of Well-Defined Functional Polymers via Thiol-Click Chemistry.” Co-authors were Ryan M. Hensarling, and Derek L. Patton. Fourth place was awarded to Vipul S. Padman for the poster titled “The Effect of Polymer Backbone Rigidity and Charge Distribution on the Polymer-Surfactant Interaction.” Co-authors were Q. Ching Stella and Robert Y. Lochhead. Fifth place was awarded to Jacob G. Ray for the poster titled “Utilizing Polymer Topology for Unique Assembly and Responsive Behavior in Polypeptide-based Amphiphiles.” Co-authors were Sandeep S. Naik, Jack Ly and Daniel A. Savin.