NEW ORLEANS - The 40^th Annual Waterborne, High-Solids, and Powder Coatings Symposium took place February 4-8, 2013, in New Orleans. Sponsored by the School of Polymers & High Performance Materials at The University of Southern Mississippi, the conference had 246 attendees, 43 presentations, 14 student posters and 18 booths. Several outstanding presentations were recognized with awards.

Michael R. Van De Mark, Missouri S&T Coatings Institute (formerly UMR) received the Shelby F. Thames Best Paper Award for his paper, “Molecular Weight (MN) and Functionality Effects on CUP Formation and Stability.”

Michel Tielemans of Cytec received the Siltech Award for Innovation for his paper, “New Advances in High Performance Waterborne Radiation-curable Emulsions and Dispersions.”

The PCI Award for Technical Excellence was given to Charles Hegedus, Air Products, for his paper, “Designed Defoamer Selection and Performance in Waterborne Coatings.”

Austin Baranek of the University of Southern Mississippi received the SSCT Best Student Paper Award for his paper, “Versatility of Bisphenol?based Polybenzoxazine Networks.”

Eastman Chemical sponsored student poster awards. First place went to Emily Hoff for her poster titled, “Hydrazone?Based Dynamic Covalent Chemistry for Reversible Brush Surface Modification.” Li Xiong received the second-place award for her poster titled, “Spray?Deposited Superamphiphobic Coatngs via Photopolymerization of Hybrid Thiol?ene Polymer Networks.” Third place went to Michael Sims for his poster titled, “Tunable pH?Responsive Sulfonamide?based Polymers via RAFT as Potential Mediators of Endosomal Drug Release.” Christopher Childers was the fourth-place winner for his poster titled, “Synthesis and Characterization of Cross?linked, Quaternary Ammonium Polybenzoxazines for Anion Exchange Membranes,” and fifth place went to Jack Ly for his poster titled, “A Facile Approach to Jeffamine?based Organogelators.”