Names in the news: Plastics Pioneers Assn.; Uniloy Milacron, Coperion, Nordson EDI; Picodeon, Genomatica, and AMSilk

with its Distinguished Service Member award. Beall, owner of his own consulting firm, Glenn Beall Plastics Ltd., is a Plastics Hall of Fame member, SPE Fellow, and PPA member since 1984. He received the Distinguished Service Member for these achievements, as well as his work with Syracuse University on behalf of the PPA to set up a reading room at the university's library, which houses industry artifacts previously held by the National Plastics Center and Museum (Leominster, MA).

The new inductees of PPA Bob Dealey, Richard Flannagan, Dennis Hayford, Robert Jackson, David Nolan, John Perdikoulias, Mark Spalding, and Tim Stojka. Dealey has spent his entire career plastics, with a focus on moldmaking. For the past 17 years, he has run Dealey's Mold Engineering. In 1994, he was named Moldmaker of the Year for SPE. Since 1963. Flannagan has always been involved in moldmaking, first with Standard Tool, then as owner of  Stan-Cast Inc. (Leominster, MA). He currently has his own firm, Molds International and Consulting. Hayford has been involved in plastics since he joined A. Schulman in 1976. Since 2000 he has been the executive director of the Polymers Center of Excellence, Charlotte, NC. Jackson is the president and CEO of Jackson Machinery Inc. (Port Washington, WI) a blowmolding machinery company he founded in 1985. He started his career in plastics in 1968. Nolan's 26-year career in plastics has been focused on advancing the state-of-the-art in injection molding. He spent 16 years at Gillette, first as a processing engineer and then as engineering manager. He is currently with Foboha USA, where is he is U.S. sales engineer. Perdikoulias joined the plastics industry in 1985, when he went to work for  Brampton Engineering as an R&D engineer. In his 12-year stint at Brampton, he designed more than 200 single-layer and more than 100 coextrusion dies for blown film, helping commercialize Brampton's stack-type die. His work ultimately lead to the sale of the first commercial 8- and 9-layer dies. He co-founded Compuplast in 1989, where he currently serves a president. Spalding's entire 28-year career has been spent working in R&D for Dow Plastics. An expert in single-screw extrusion and related processing, Spalding has worked with Dow customer's solving extrusion problems at their plants by developing and applying sophisticated troubleshooting methods. Stojka is the CEO of temperature-control equipment supplier Fast Heat (Elmhurst, IL). Throughout his career, Stojka has devoted his time to numerous industry associations, most notably the Society of the Plastics Industry. He has served as chairman of NPE and as vice chairman of the SPI's Midwest Region. Founded in 1944, the PPA is a non-profit group with a roster of approximately 200 members, all of whom have at least 25 years of experience in plastics.

Blowmolding system supplier Uniloy Milacron has named Dave Skala as Group VP. The company said the move is part of a broader effort by Milacron to improve the ability of Uniloy to represent itself to the global blowmolding market. Skala, who started with Uniloy in 1980, has served in a number of operations, including DME and Milacron Aftermarket. He was most recently VP and general manager of Uniloy North America. Additionally, Colin Taylor, a member of the Uniloy Global Leadership Team, has been named Managing Director, Uniloy Europe. He will be assisted by Cesare Cerizza of Magenta, Italy and Marc Monneuse of Berlin, Germany and Policka, Czech Republic in their respective operations.

Coperion GmbH (Stuttgart, Germany) has announced that Thomas Kehl will take over as president and chairman of the executive board effective immediately. He has been a member of Coperion's executive board since 2008 and succeeds Günter Bachmann, who leaves Coperion after nine years as chairman of the executive board. In his new capacity, Kehl will report directly to Joe Raver, president of Coperion's owner, Hillenbrand, and its Process Equipment Group. Prior to joining Coperion in 2008, Kehl was managing director of Rieter Automatik, senior vice president of Rieter AG in Switzerland, and chief executive officer of Freudenberg Nonwovens.

Rakesh Kumar Singh, experienced in extrusion technology, has become a field service engineer for Nordson Extrusion Dies Industries (Chippewa Falls, WI) in India and Southeast Asia. The company noted that he brings more than 20 years of experience in many phases of extrusion and in responsibilities ranging from processing to technical service. He comes to Nordson Extrusion Dies Industries from the Indian subsidiary of Theysohn Extrusionstechnik, where he was a regional manager from 2008 to 2013. He entered the extrusion field in 1993 as an engineer with Kolsite Machine Fabric Ltd. The company also announced that Beck Xing has been appointed as a sales engineer serving the southern region of China. Xing will report to Jason Q. Yin, general manager of Nordson Extrusion Dies Industries (Shanghai). He comes to the company from Scantech Electronic Measuring Equipment Co. Ltd., where he was responsible for sales in South China.

Genomatica announced the addition of Just Jansz to its Board of Directors. Jansz has 30 years of experience as a senior executive in the chemical industry with leaders such as LyondellBasell and Shell. Former president of technology at Basell and LyondellBasell, he led the licensing and catalyst businesses from 2004 to 2010. Genomatica's BDO process was used to make 5 million lb of BDO in late 2012, and has been licensed by both BASF and Novamont.

Jari Liimatainen has been appointed as interim CEO of Finnish coating technology specialist Picodeon. He will continue as CTO of the company. Liimatainen previously held several senior management positions as Managing Director of Metso Materials and VP of Metso Minerals and Metso Powdermet, divisions of process industry technology and services company Metso Oyj. Picodeon's previous CEO, Marko Mylläri, will as continue as an external business development consultant to the company.

Lin Römer has been appointed as an additional managing director of AMSilk, developer of a proprietary process for producing spider silk on an industrial scale. Römer is co-founder of AMSilk, developing the technology together with Thomas Scheibel. He will continue to head the scientific and technical development of the AMSilk Technology and will direct the business of AMSilk together with Axel Leimer.