Brent Strong, Board of Advisors Member
Brent Strong, Ph.D., is an emeritus faculty member in the Fulton College of Engineering and Technology (Manufacturing) at Brigham Young University. He was named the Loren Farr Professor of Entrepreneurial Technology (which included a seat on the Entrepreneurship board of the College of Business) and was also given the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Award (BYU’s highest faculty recognition.) In addition, because of his efforts in the area of creativity, Dr. Strong was awarded the Maeser General Education Professorship and, on four different occasions, the Outstanding Faculty Award in the School of Technology and also the Outstanding College Research in the College of Engineering and Technology.
Dr. Strong currently is Chief Technical Officer and serves on the board of directors for the Utah Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Initiative (UAMMI), a state-sponsored association of Utah industry, educational institutions, and governmental agencies associated with advanced materials and manufacturing (generally composites). He is the chair of the oversight committee for the coal-to-carbon fiber project at the University of Utah ($1.58 million) and is a key contributor to the UAMMI supply chain contract.
Dr. Strong is the founding director of the Advanced Composite Manufacturing and Engineering (ACME) Center and a Director of the Rapid Product Realization Center, both Centers of Excellence for the State of Utah. (These centers were funded for 5 years, the maximum amount allowed by law.) He is also the founding Director of the Manufacturing Leadership Forum that supervised and implemented the internship program of the manufacturing students at BYU (including a founding grant of $1.1 million), the Venture Factory (student entrepreneur club) and the Student Innovator of the Year program, all at BYU.
He was elected International President of the Society for the Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering (SAMPE) and was later elected as a SAMPE Fellow (SAMPE’s highest technical honor). He currently serves on both the North American and the Global Boards of Directors for SAMPE and has recently been elected the Global President.
Prior to entering Brigham Young University, Dr. Strong had a successful career in industry. He was President of Hardie Irrigation Systems, a worldwide manufacturer of plastic equipment for the drip irrigation industry with sales of $18 million. He was also the vice president for market development for the Eyring Research Institute (taking the sales from $5 to $14 million) and a senior research chemist and manufacturing engineer for the DuPont Company working on 5 new venture projects. Dr. Strong continues to be active in business – serving on advisory boards and consulting for a number of companies including Conductive Composites, BiologiQ, and Solid Carbon Products.
Dr. Strong has a Bachelor’s degree and a PhD in Chemistry. His technical research interests include such topics as investigating durability and performance of plastics and composite materials and developing new manufacturing methods for plastics and composites. He teaches and lectures widely in the fields of plastics and composites. He is widely recognized as a world expert in advanced materials and is routinely asked to lecture throughout the world.
Dr. Strong also conducts research into methods of improving productivity of entrepreneurs, the nature of creativity, and how people can improve personal and corporate creativity.
He is the author, co-author or editor of 15 books including the widely used textbooks Composites In Manufacturing and Plastics: Materials and Processing. He has authored or co-authored over 130 peer reviewed and invited papers, and is the inventor or co-inventor on 15 patents.