Stephen L. Matson Bio - PhD Ceremony Speaker

Founder and Executive Director, ConTechs Associates, Inc

Dr. Stephen Matson is establishing ConTechs Associates Inc., a fledgling non-profit organization, in hopes of facilitating the execution of socially and educationally meaningful projects by engineering students and their professors in developing countries. ConTechs' operations to date focus on Bolivia and the application there of such "appropriate chemical technologies" as the conversion of natural gas to diesel via less capital-intensive processes and the production of biofuels from non-food crops.

Although ConTechs is Steve's first intentionally not-for-profit enterprise, during his largely industrial career he has co-founded or advised several other start-ups - some profitable, others not so much! In 1984 he co-founded Sepracor, Inc. to commercialize earlier PhD research with Prof. John Quinn at Penn on enzyme membrane reactors for chiral separations. Sepracor is now a profitable mid-cap pharmaceutical firm developing and marketing single-isomer and active-metabolite pharmaceuticals including Lunesta®, Xopenex®, and Allegra®. He has participated in other start-ups in fields as diverse as combinatorial chemistry, biochromatography, blood filtration, and DNA sequencing.

Dr. Matson received his B.S. and M.S. from Cornell and his Ph.D. from Penn in 1979. Apart from Sepracor (where he was V.P., R&D and V.P., Science & Technology), previous employers include General Electric, Bend Research, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. A registered professional engineer, he has fifty journal articles, book chapters, and U.S. patents to his credit. Professional service includes terms as director of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and president/director of the North American Membrane Society. He is a recipient of AIChE's Professional Progress Award and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. In 1995 Steve was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.