About the PIA

The Institute was organized in 1961 by the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) because the Society's board of directors felt the organization was placing too much emphasis on sales/business related issues and too little on science and technology.

New polymers were coming on line at that time, mainly in the area of polyolefins, and the industry lacked qualified personnel to work with these materials. PIA took steps to remedy this problem by awarding fellowships to graduate schools that offered programs and conducted research in "polymer science." The few educational institutions addressing these issues in those years included Princeton University, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Lowell Technological Institute (now University of Massachusetts Lowell), and Stevens Institute of Technology (now New Jersey Institute of Technology). A total of 22 institutions responded to the original committee's poll. Stevens Institute of Technology was finally selected as the original site for PIA's headquarters.

In 1963, PIA established offices on the Stevens' campus and began functioning. Mr. Thomas Zawadski, who guided the institute for two years prior to the founding of the new headquarters and began to obtain the industry's support for building an education base for the plastics industry, served as the organization's first Executive Secretary.

The first annual meeting was held in 1963 and, during the same year, the first Annual Conference was conducted, dealing with "Time Dependent Effects in Plastics Materials". This conference proved so successful that the topic was repeated the following three years. PIA also sponsored its first intensive short course, "Plastics Engineering' in August 1963, attended by 58 people and held on the Stevens campus.

In 1966, Mr. Zawadski resigned. His resignation was reluctantly accepted by the Board of Trustees, which appointed as his successor Dr. Albert W. Meyer. During the following four years, the number of intensive graduate short courses grew to 13, and were offered for the first time at other colleges and universities in addition to Stevens. This was a direct result of the Board's decision to expand PIA education activities to a larger geographic area and to enlarge the subject matter covered in the intensive short courses.

In 1971, Dr. Meyer retired as Executive Secretary and Mr. Albert Spaak was named to serve as Executive Director of the Institute.

In 1988, Dr. William Sacks replaced Mr. Spaak as Executive Director. Mr. Spaak continued to serve as a part-time technical director until June 1990, and in November 1990 the PIA moved to improved quarters in Fairfield, New Jersey.

Six years later, the Institute moved once again, this time to its headquarters at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The PIA offices now reside there in the same building as the Institute for Plastics Innovation, a technology center for plastics manufacturing.

Coincident with that move, the Institute named Dr. Aldo Crugnola of UMass Lowell as the Institute's executive director.