Dr. Chun Sing Wong wins The Heinz List Award 2020

Dr. Chun Sing Wong (retired from DuPont) is the 2020 winner of the Heinz List Award. Dr. Wong was born in Hong Kong. He received his BSc degree from The University of Hong Kong and his PhD degree from The University of Chicago. Under the guidance of Professor Jack Halpern in Chicago, he studied kinetics and mechanisms of reactions involving organometallic complexes. After graduation he immigrated to Canada and worked with Professor Howard Clark as a postdoctoral fellow. Later he joined DuPont Canada Inc. in their Research Division in Kingston Ontario.

With the goal of increasing the value-in-use of PE, he developed a process to functionalize PE in a twin-screw extruder. It involved extruding PE and maleic anhydride together in the presence of a peroxide free radical initiator. The final process had high monomer conversion efficiency and had a rate comparable to that of simple compounding. The resultant grafted product had low residual monomer, low gel, and low colour. Similar processes were also developed for other thermoplastics and elastomers, leading to the commercialization of several FUSABOND® product lines. Commercial production of these products is still occurring in North America, Asia, and Europe.

About the Heinz List Award

Heinz List, founder of LIST Technology AG, was a pioneer of modern industrial processing technology. He was the inventor of the Ko-Kneader and a member of the Polymer Processing Hall of Fame. Recipients of the Heinz List Award are to have contributed significantly to the advancement of polymer devolatilization, drying, evaporation, or reactive polymerization technologies pertaining to extrusion processing. The Heinz List Award is sponsored by LIST Technology US Inc.