Don Weinkauf

Biography

Since 2008, Dr. Don Weinkauf has served as the Dean of Engineering at the University of St Thomas in St. Paul.  From 1996-2008, Dr. Weinkauf was Professor of Chemical Engineering at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico.  He has been honored nationally for his teaching and research as a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar.  Prior to his career in academia, Dr. Weinkauf worked for Shell Oil Company as a Research Engineer.  He has also worked as a Foreign Scholar for the Mexican government CONACYT.  He is the author of over forty papers and book chapters.  His research in polymer materials and plastics processing has been cited over 800 times in the literature.  He is the inventor on 3 U.S. Patents and has been the Principal Investigator on over 5 million dollars in federal, state and corporate research grants.  He holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and a BS from Iowa State University both in Chemical Engineering.  Dr. Weinkauf is a native of Wisconsin, and lives with his wife and three children in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Research Interest

Polymer materials.  Conformal plasma surface modification.  Transport & barrier properties of polymers.  Plastics processing.  Engineering Education.  Renewable Energy & Sustainability.