Education

Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Northwestern University
M.S. in Chemical Engineering, Northwestern University
B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University

Biography

Ralph H. Colby received his B.S. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University in 1979. After working two years at the General Electric Company in rheology research and process development, he attended graduate school at Northwestern University, where he received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering in 1983 and 1985. Graduate research focused on rheology of linear polybutadiene melts and solutions, and included 15 months as a visiting scholar in the Exxon Research and Engineering Company, Corporate Research Science Laboratories. He then worked for ten years at the Eastman Kodak Company in their Corporate Research Laboratories. Rheology research areas over these ten years included linear polymer melts and solutions, miscible polymer blends, block copolymers, randomly branched polymers, polymer gels, liquid crystalline polymers, polyelectrolytes, proteins, surfactants and colloidal suspensions. In 1995, Dr. Colby was hired into the position of Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University and was promoted to Professor in 2000. He teaches a very demanding undergraduate course on Polymer Rheology and Processing and continues to use rheological experiments to probe the dynamics of polymers and other complex fluids. He also teaches a graduate course on Polymer Physics to delve deeper into the inner workings of polymer. Colby received the 2012 Bingham Medal of the Society of Rheology 🥇 and has been the Editor of the Journal of Rheology since 2011.