A.N. Sreeram is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Dow, where he focuses on accelerating new product commercialization through strategic collaboration with Dow’s businesses and customers.
Sreeram leads a vibrant R&D organization at Dow focused on step-change technology development aligned with market demand. Under Sreeram’s leadership, Dow transformed its innovation approach, significantly growing high-throughput experimentation and analysis capabilities extending from material discovery and processing through to application development. Sreeram has established strong value chain partnerships, giving Dow a seat at the customer’s design table and strong connections to market signals. Dow’s innovation pipeline is strongly aligned with strategic growth areas and global challenges, and empowering Dow researchers to excel. When combined, the capabilities and expertise of Dow’s R&D organization provide a distinct competitive advantage, enabling the company to more quickly develop products, ensuring that new products are simultaneously better performing and more sustainable in order to meet customer needs, and rapidly commercializing new innovations into established and emerging markets. In 2020 he received the prestigious biennial Henry F. Whalen Jr. Award that recognizes outstanding contributions to research and business within the chemical industry.
Products developed at Dow under Sreeram’s leadership have received many awards for innovation and sustainability, including the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge, the Business Intelligence Group Innovation and Sustainability Awards, as well as R&D 100 and Edison Awards, both of which Dow has cumulatively won more than any other company during his tenure. Examples of award-winning technologies include DOWSILTM TC-4060 Thermal Gel, ENGAGETM 11000 Polyolefin Elastomers, RHOBARRTM 320 Polyolefin Dispersion for Paper and Board, EVOQUE™ Pre-composite Polymer for Paints, INNATE™ Precision Packaging Resins, INFUSE™ Olefin Block Copolymers, DOWSIL™ EP-9610 Cosmetic Powder, ECOFAST™ Pure Sustainable Textile Treatment, Dow Performance Silicones Moldable Optical Silicone, ROPAQUE™ Opaque Polymer for BLU4EST™ Thermal Paper, ACCUTRACE™ Fuel Markers and RENUVA™ Mattress Recycling Program for polyurethane foams.
Sreeram served as Vice President of R&D for Dow Advanced Materials prior to assuming his current role. He joined Dow in June 2006 as Vice President of Core R&D, driving innovation in a number of key market segments, including automotive, infrastructure and health. He led the adoption of high-throughput technologies to significantly accelerate the R&D process, while lowering costs and dramatically increasing product successes.
Prior to joining Dow, Sreeram served as the Global Technology Director and Chief Technology Officer for DuPont Electronic Technologies. Prior to this, he served as Vice President of Worldwide Technology for Cookson Electronics, and, before that, he led the Electronic and Flat Display Department for Sarnoff Corporation.
Sreeram served on the White House’s President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) advising the President on matters of science, technology, education, and innovation policy. Sreeram holds more than 20 U.S. patents, earned his doctorate degree from the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and his master’s degree in Glass Science from Alfred University in New York where he currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees. He is also a graduate of the ceramics engineering program at the Indian Institute of Technology – BHU in Varanasi, India.