Key Engineering Materials, Volume 1

Devrim Balkose, PhD, graduated from Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) Chemical Engineering Department in 1969. She received her MS and PhD degrees from Ege University, Izmir, Turkey, in 1974 and 1977 respectively. She became Associate Professor in macromolecular chemistry in 1983 and Professor in process and reactor engineering in 1990. She worked as research assistant, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor between 1970-2000 at Ege University. She was the Head of Chemical Engineering Department at Izmir Institute of Technology, Izmir, Turkey, between 2000-2009. She is now a faculty member in the same department. Her research interests are in polymer reaction engineering, polymer foams and films, adsorbent development, and moisture sorption. Her research projects are on nanosized zinc borate production, ZnO polymer composites, zinc borate lubricants, antistatic additives, and metal soaps.

Daniel Horak, PhD, graduated from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague, Czech Republic, where he received MSc degree in macromolecular chemistry. His PhD degree in chemistry was obtained from the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic , where he is employed as the Head of the Department of Polymer Particles. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa in Canada with Professor Frechet in 1983-84, winner of the scholarship from the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science, at the Technological University of Nagaoka with Professor Imai in Japan in 1987-88, visiting scientist at the Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with Professor Frechet in 1993-94. He also served as a visiting scientist at the University of Montreal in Canada in 2001. His research activity includes magnetic nano- and microspheres, polymer particles by heterogeneous polymerization techniques including emulsion, suspension, and dispersion polymerization; properties of the particles, their chemical modifi