Chad Jasiunas, 41Technical Manager Functional MaterialsLehigh Technologies Inc.
Since his return to the tire industry four years ago, Chad Jasiunas has been hard at work helping Lehigh Technologies develop the new compound technology, EkoDyne, that essentially repurposes tire compounds to be put back into tires.
“EkoDyne is a functional compound, which is a renewable functional compound, aimed to increase the sustainability content in tires and other rubber compounds,” he says. “This is truly a breakthrough development for rubber compound and is being tested in tires today.”
Jasiunas got his start in the industry 11 years ago at Goodyear as a research engineer developing new solution polymers for better traction and rolling resistance properties. He says the job gave him a foundation for his future work. While he left the industry for a time and left the country to work in Poland, he is glad to be back.
His favorite thing about the tire industry is his ability to impact younger scientists and engineers.
“While the industry tends to move at a slower pace, this allows for R&D efforts to make a tremendous impact in the coming years,” he explains. “The focus is shifting to greener tires and reducing the impact on the environment (as Europe likes to call it the circular economy). Identifying ways to efficiently incorporate used sustainable/renewable resources into newer tires will be the key for the future.”
FUN FACT: “I really wanted to be a carpenter while I was a child. I loved to disassemble and build things from scratch. Then I learned about math and found that engineering offers the best of both worlds!”
