John Texter (born August 9, 1949, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania) is an American engineer, chemist, and educator. He is professor emeritus of polymer and coating technology at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and managing consultant of Strider Research Corporation (SRC). He is best known for his work (see references below in Industrial and Academic career sections) in applied dispersion technology, small particle science, and stimuli-responsive polymers based on ionic liquids, for his international conference organization activities, including Particles 2001, Particles 2002, etc., and the Gordon Research Conferences, Chemistry at Interfaces and Chemistry of Supramolecules and Assemblies, and for his editing of the Primers page for nanoparticles.org.
Education
Texter received his secondary education at Penn Manor High School in Millersville, Pennsylvania, where he lettered in soccer and wrestling. He matriculated to Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1967 with the aid of a Lehigh Merit Scholarship and graduated with a BSEE in 1971. He was mentored in his undergraduate years by John J. Karakash, who designed the Electrical Engineering curriculum at Lehigh to liberally educate through engineering. His proclivity for control theory (mentored by Donald Talheim), sparked an interest in physiology and then biochemistry, and he was further stimulated by the lectures of Forbes T. Brown in graduate mechanical engineering courses on time-dependent control theory and hybrid systems modeling with a focus on bond graph analysis. His undergraduate biochemistry studies led him to physical chemistry. He continued at Lehigh to obtain an MS in chemistry in 1973 (mentored by Daniel Zeroka, Jim Sturm, and Roland Lovejoy), an MS in mathematics in 1976 (mentored by Gilbert Stengel), and a PhD in chemistry in 1976. He was further mentored in graduate studies by Albert Zettlemoyer, Fred Fowkes, and Kamil Klier, his thesis advisor. Texter spent a postdoctoral year in biophysical spectroscopy at the University of California, Irvine with John Clark Sutherland in their physiology department, initiating Monte Carlo analyses and modeling of DNA photochemical processes, and a postdoctoral year with Eugene S. Stevens at Binghamton University, chemistry department, developing a time-dependent Hartree–Fock model for circular dichroism in saccharides and a Monte Carlo-based nonlinear optimization (solver) algorithm defined on compact sets with arbitrary constraints.
Service to the public and the profession
Texter served as chairman of the division of colloid and surface chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 1998 and in a variety of line officer and executive committee positions before and since (1991–2002), and returned to serve as program chair (2008–2010). He has organized many regional, national, and international conferences, including organizing ACS NERM (American Chemical Society northeast regional meeting) symposia in Rochester, NY, chairing the Gordon Research Conferences: Chemistry at Interfaces (Interfacial Structure) in Meriden, New Hampshire, in 1996 and Chemistry of Supramolecules and Assemblies (Functional Materials through Bottom-Up Self-Assembly) in Barga, Tuscany, in 2007. He has also organized and served as General Chair for the Particles Conferences Particles 2001, Particles 2002, through Particles 2013 in Dayton. He is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Society for Imaging Science and Technology.
Industrial career
Texter has over 40 years of experience in industrial small particle and coating technologies. He worked in the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratories from 1978 to 1998 and he was managing consultant for Strider Research Corporation from 1998 to the present. From the spring of 2001, he served for a year as a rotator in the National Science Foundation Chemistry Division as Program Director of Experimental Physical Chemistry. Through Strider Research Corporation (SRC) he consults in nanotechnology, advanced polymeric composites and materials, and IP (intellectual property) management. He also offers SRC short courses and workshops in small particle technology, surface modification chemistry and processing, cross-linking technologies, and patenting.
While at Eastman Kodak Company and at Eastern Michigan University he was a prolific inventor and co-inventor in the field of dispersion technology, and he was awarded 47 issued US Patents and numerous EU and PTO patents.