An Opportunity for Young Investigators in CRS’s Oldest Division
The Consumer & Diversified Products (C&DP) Division held a social event on the first day of the 2022 CRS Annual Meeting (far left), where chair Malinda Salim gave a brief welcome (middle). The group also held two technical sessions (far right) featuring speakers from academia and industry.
Consumer & diversified products (C&DP) make up the origins of today’s CRS. Before the boom of sustained-release pharmaceutics in the 1980s and 90s, controlled release formulations gained traction in agriculture/pesticides and industry/chemicals. The first CRS meetings were in fact the Controlled Release Pesticide Symposium in 1973 and 1974. Since then, the society has grown in recognition as a pharmaceutical organization, but C&DP technologies remain an area of active interest and investment.
C&DP represents “essentially all controlled release technologies outside of pharmaceuticals,” described Kurt Ristroph, an Assistant Professor at Purdue University and current secretary of the C&DP Division. Examples include nutritional supplements, probiotics, cosmetics, fertilizers, pesticides, paints, industrial coatings, and textile chemicals. The Division’s main activities surround the Annual Meeting, where they organized a social event for Tuesday afternoon and two technical sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. The well-attended technical sessions featured invited talks from Jiten Dihora (Trucapsol LLC), Yabin Lei (International Flavor and Fragrances), Richard Gray (Particle Works), and Claire Thompson (Agility Life Sciences) as well as selected abstract speakers Shayan Lahiji (Hanyang University), Damien Dupin (CIDETEC Nanomedicine), Fatima Abid (University of South Australia), Cuie Yan (Blue California), Joel Hellrup (Nanexa AB), Sabrina Roussel (University Laval), Michial Alst (IamFluidics), and Andrew Otte (Purdue University).
The Division also awards one best abstract submission each year. The 2022 awardee was Dr. Damien Dupin for his work “Inspired by nature: Biomimetic stabilizers for smart cosmetic active ingredient encapsulation” conducted at CIDETEC, a private organization for applied research in Spain.
Historically, industry members have been well represented in the C&DP Division, beginning with the group’s formation in 1995 under Mary Marshall, a manager at the Southwestern Research Institute (SwRI). Today’s board maintains representation from across academia and industry, with Jeff Wu, CEO of NeoVentech, serving as Past Chair, and Malinda Salim, Research Fellow at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Jie Shen, Assistant Professor at the University of Rhode Island, as the current vice chair. “If young CRS members are looking for advice from industry, our Board members can help connect them with this expertise,” Malinda said, pointing to board representatives from Estée Lauder and SwRI. SwRI remains a large sponsor of CRS.
For those new to the C&DP, the division has many plans to grow in the upcoming year. They hope to increase their collaborations with the Young Scientist Committee (YSC) by including a YSC representative on the C&DP board and a C&DP representative within the YSC. Further, they are working to launch a mentoring program for C&DP trainees and experts similar to the existing YSC initiative. Finally, like many groups in CRS, they plan to leverage the global and technical reach of Local Chapters and Focus Groups to expand their activities and membership. “Our goal is for C&DP to re-emerge in the society with young people from a broad range of research areas,” Malinda emphasized.
Interested members can find more information through the CRS website and by connecting with the group on Twitter (@CRS_CDP).
