Monica Tisack

Executive Director, Mississippi Polymer Institute | USM Innovation and Commercialization Park

Monica is the executive director of the Mississippi Polymer Institute (MPI) and the USM Innovation and Commercialization (IC) Park in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  This position allows her to work at the sweet spot intersection of academia, entrepreneurism, commercial industry, and economic development. The non-profit Polymer Institute catalyzes and supports the growth of advanced materials at all stages of business maturity and assists in educational outreach; the IC Park provides leasable laboratory and production space to foster business creation and sustainability. Working at USM allows collaborative interaction with cutting-edge polymer research at the School of Polymer Science and Engineering, with start-ups located on-site at the IC Park, as well as local inventors and well-established multinational companies.

Prior to joining MPI at the University of Southern Mississippi, she spent 20 years in the polymer industry working with nylon, Nafion™, ETFE, PTFE, Teflon™, and Tedlar™ polymer products with DuPont and its subsequent spin-off, The Chemours Company.  Before graduate school, she interned as a technician at Eastman Chemical Company in their polyester division.  Monica has a B.S. and Ph.D. in Polymer Science and a passion for commercialization of new products.

Her background has allowed her to work across many different market spaces, including but not limited to Consumer Packaging, Industrial and Apparel Fibers, Fuel cell Batteries, Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Active Ingredients, Industrial and Consumer Coatings, Chloralkali membrane chemical production, Medical Products, and Solar Energy.  Monica’s previous roles include R&D principle investigator, technical service scientist, market and business development managers, sales manager, growth leader, platform pricing and competitive intelligence leader, and business and product manager.  Her work has taken her all over the world to interface with customers and plant operations.