Gary Whiting named Joseph H. Collie Professor
Gary Whiting, professor of practice of chemical engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, was recently received Joseph H. Collie Professorship of Chemical Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
The Joseph H. Collie Endowed Chaired Professorship is awarded to a distinguished visiting professor who has extensive industrial experience and expertise in production, marketing, and sales of chemical products to introduce chemical engineering students to advanced business and marketing concepts in chemicals distribution management. The professorship was created in 1995 with a gift by its namesake, who earned his bachelor's in chemical engineering from the university in 1950.
With more than 30 years of experience in the chemical industry and 25 years of experience as a small business owner and entrepreneur, Whiting is an expert in global product management, product and process development processes, technology leadership, chemicals marketing, and market development.
Whiting joined the Virginia Tech faculty earlier this year following his retirement from DuPont in 2015. He brought to the university significant experience in marketing, new business development, process and product development, and project engineering.
At DuPont, he worked largely in research and development implementing process improvements resulting in patents in the area of reactor design and control. His work in process development at DuPont was proprietary and could not be published in the open literature however Whiting was a prolific contributor to the internal DuPont knowledge base, having written more than 100 technical reports resulting in Technical Report of the Year honors within DuPont Chemicals.
He was named as a DuPont Titanium Technologies Research/Engineering Fellow in 2004. He holds both Six Sigma Green Belt and Innovation Process Champions certifications.
Whiting is also considered an expert in nanomaterials. As business venture manager leading DuPont Titanium Technologies’ effort in the area of nanomaterials, his team created a new nano-titanium dioxide product that was launched as a specialty product useful in UV absorption and scattering in polymer systems.
He was named to the corporate DuPont Nanotechnology Advisory Team.
Whiting is a co-author of the highly regarded Nano Risk Framework, a collaborative effort between DuPont and Environmental Defense Fund for the responsible development, production, use and disposal of nano-scale materials.
For this work, he received the DuPont Sustainable Growth Excellence Award in 2008.
Whiting’s most recent role of seven years was global product manager for DuPont Titanium Technologies (now Chemours Titanium Technologies) where he was responsible for the profitability, competitiveness, quality, and sustainability of a more than half-billion dollar global product portfolio.
Whiting received his bachelor's degree from Lebanon Valley College, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Virginia Tech.
