Brent Smith, PhD

Dr. Smith now holds the distinguished Cone Mills Chaired professorship in Polymer and Color Chemistry. He is an internationally known expert in textile wet processing, pollution prevention, process optimization and process control, and dry side science and technology. He has 14 years production experience as a chemist, research manager and technical director, as well as extensive consulting experience. Since coming to NC State in 1984, he has been involved in over 50 major on-site production projects with textile mills in the USA and abroad.

Keith Beck, PhD

Dr. Beck is the department head for the Textile Engineering, Chemistry and Science (TECS) in the College of Textiles at NC State. He has a PhD in organic chemistry from Purdue University and his research emphasizes dyebath monitoring, liquid chromatographic analysis of textile materials, textile applications of near-infrared spectroscopy, and the use of liquid and supercritical CO2 for textile cleaning, dyeing and analysis. He is also serving on the company’s Board of Directors.

Warren Jasper, PhD

Dr. Jasper is an associate professor in the College of Textiles in Textile Engineering, Chemistry and Science (TECS). He has a PhD from Stanford University focusing on control systems with a PhD minor in electrical engineering. Dr. Jasper is a process controls expert with more than 19 years experience managing Unix operating systems and developing applications for real-time operating systems. Dr. Jasper’s research at NC State has focused on control applications of image processing, neural networks, and fuzzy logic involving textiles dyeing processes. He has worked as the principal systems engineer for a startup company, Billions-of-Operations-Per-Second (BOPS).

Walter Hendrix, PhD, P.E.

Dr. Hendrix is a Senior Project Engineer with the College of Textiles at NC State. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering and a Master of Science and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Hendrix has more than 30 years of broad-based engineering experience with a strong focus on manufacturing. Nearly half of this experience has been in process and product development, including design, procurement and assembly of equipment from bench to full scale. He is a co-inventor on four process equipment patents.

Melih Gunay, PhD

Dr. Gunay is a PhD in Fiber and Polymer Science. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Textile Engineering and a Masters in Computer Science.