Dr. Alex Norman received his PhD (2003) in Physical Chemistry from the University of Sheffield where he was advised by Professor Patrick Fairclough and Professor Tony Ryan. His PhD Thesis was on "Phase Behavior and Transition Kinetics of Poly(oxyalkylene) Block Copolymers in Aqueous Solution".
In 2003, Alex began a Post Doc in the Polymer Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland under the guidance of Dr. Alamgir Karim and Dr. Eric Amis. Here. Alex incorporated Scattering Methods (Neutrons, X-rays and Light) in to Combinatorial and High- Throughput Materials Science. In 2005 Alex moved to The University of Maryland where he worked as a Post Doc with Sandra Greer on Polymer Partitioning and Fractionation in Binary Solvents. Here Alex also worked on the low resolution structure of the protein Actin in dilute solution, using Pair Distance Distribution Functions from Neutron Scattering methods. In 2007-2008 Alex spent one year in the Weck laboratory at New York University working on the Morphology of Poly(norbornene) Copolymers.
From 2008-2010 Alex was a Senior Scientist at the ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Corporate Research Labs in Clinton New Jersey. Alex worked in the Advanced Characterization group, working on X-ray scattering methods on Polyolefin Products, Desulfurization Catalysts, Battery Separator Films and Pore Structure in Natural Resources.
From 2011-2013, Alex actually moved from ExxonMobil to United Technologies (UTC) in East Hartford, Connecticut and worked on X-ray and neutron scattering capability development for the central UTC research labs. Specifically Alex worked on Polymer Composites, Ceramic Matrix Composites and Environmental Barrier Coatings.
Alex was in the Product Fundamentals Group at ExxonMobil Chemical Company in Baytown, Texas. Alex works on early stage product development efforts for Polyolefin Elastomers, Structure-Property Relationships for Polyethylene, and continues to work on improving methods for X-ray and Neutron Scattering for Polymer R&D.