Cathy Tway

Title: Innovation for a Mature Technology Space

The need for innovation is a very popular topic, both in the popular press and in business circles. Simultaneously, the effectiveness of R&D in delivering innovation is highly scrutinized. Typically the time from project initiation to the breakeven point after commercialization for new materials and chemical processes can be on the order of 10 to 20 years, with the timeline becoming lengthier as the technologies become more disruptive. In mature areas, the challenges to introducing new technologies become even greater because of incumbency, and yet, innovation is particularly important to enable decarbonization of the industrial sectors. This talk will present an overview of a few of the challenges for industrial innovation and highlight some of the future industrial innovation opportunities.Cathy Tway is the Director for the Materials Science and Engineering Capability of Core Research & Development. In this role, Cathy is responsible for a global team of scientists and engineers specializing in materials science, processing technologies, engineering design, and numerical modeling for predictive engineering.

Cathy joined Dow in 2007 as a Research Leader in the Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis organization. She developed and led the Core R&D efforts for ethylene oxide catalyst discovery and also introduced several new inorganic materials research programs. Most recently, Cathy was the Director of the Inorganic Materials and Heterogeneous Catalysis Capability within Core R&D, where she was responsible for expanding research capabilities in heterogeneous catalysis, inorganic materials, and characterization. Prior to joining Dow, Cathy held positions at Celanese, Solutia and AkzoNobel, holding both individual contributor and R&D leadership roles. Her industrial experience covers the entire project life cycle including front end identification and creation of new technologies, process scale-up, commercialization and plant support. Over her career, Cathy has commercialized two inorganic materials and four catalyst technologies, with two of these processes still in use today.

Cathy earned her B.S. degree in Chemistry from Wichita State University and her PhD in Physical Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Nebraska.