03.30.23
Axalta Coating Systems has elevated Dr. Mike Grady and Dr. Jeff Johnson to Axalta Fellow for their significant scientific accomplishments, technical leadership, and commercial contributions. Axalta Fellow is the highest honor that a scientist or engineer can earn within the company’s global Technology function.
“Our Axalta Fellows have a strong track record of translating scientific knowledge into solutions for our customers and delivering commercial success across our business,” said Dr. Robert Roop, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Axalta. “Mike and Jeff are Technology Ambassadors and truly exemplify our purpose to innovate smarter surface solutions for better living and a sustainable future. Their outstanding leadership inspires the scientific community.”
Dr. Grady is Axalta’s leading expert in reaction engineering, polymer processing, reactor design, modeling, and optimization. For more than 40 years he has developed and improved Axalta’s resin processes for many coatings technologies. Dr. Grady has also initiated and driven fundamental research to advance higher temperature acrylic free-radical chemistry within Axalta and academia. His process innovations include significant improvements for making many of our key resins including solution acrylics, polyesters, and oligomers for low VOC materials. He leads our global resin network of Technology and Operations process engineers and is instrumental in driving best practices and known solutions across Axalta’s laboratories and manufacturing sites. He serves as an Adjunct Professor at Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania, and Rowan University. He earned a doctorate in Chemical Engineering from Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Switzerland.
Dr. Johnson is Axalta’s leading expert in resin synthesis. For more than 30 years he has developed innovative resins that enable multiple generations of new product development and commercialization, with broad customer and commercial impact across many original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and industrial customers. Dr. Johnson is a subject matter expert for all resin classes at Axalta. His deep knowledge and fundamental understanding cover a variety of polymer architectures, including acrylic, epoxy, polyester, polyurethane, and silane chemistry. He has 89 granted patents spanning 14 countries that support commercial sales over the years. Dr. Johnson’s impact goes beyond resin development. His extensive experience in entire value chain of product development lends him deep credibility with our customers. He has also represented Axalta in many technical partnership programs. He earned a doctorate in Organic Chemistry from University of California – Los Angeles.
