Trustee and Chair Emeritus

Kurt L. Adams is the VP of R&D for Georgia-Pacific’s Consumer Products Group, the largest retail and commercial tissue and tabletop business in North America with familiar consumer brands including Quilted Northern® and Angel Soft® bath tissue; Brawny® and Sparkle® paper towels; Mardi Gras® and Vanity Fair® napkins and the Dixie® brand of disposable tabletop products including plates, cups and cutlery.  He is responsible for GP’s Innovation Institute in Neenah, Wisconsin, the central site for research, development and lab services for the Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products Group. The teams there focus on both advancing technology platforms as well as product development, and work closely with product/category teams on innovations across the full breadth of current and future offerings, as well as providing technical consulting and assistance to the operating locations.

He was previously employed for over 27 years by DuPont, where he held a variety of technology and business leadership roles, most recently as VP of Technology and Innovation for DuPont Packaging and Industrial Polymers, a leading supplier of high performance polymers serving packaging, consumer, and infrastructure markets and applications.

He is also a founding member and Director of the Science, Technology, and Research Institute of Delaware (STRIDE) a non-profit organization drawing upon the Delaware Valley’s scientific talent to benefit the public by promoting cutting edge research, supporting and developing new businesses, and facilitating public science education. 

Dr. Adams has a more than 30 year history with TRI, first as a graduate student conducting his PhD thesis research at Princeton University and more recently as a member of the Board of Trustees, including a term as Chairman of the Board.  He holds a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University.