The Master’s Industrial Internship Program welcomes Dr. Stacey York as Director of Strategic Partnerships. In her new role, Stacey will be interfacing with company partners, students, professional organizations and faculty.
Stacey comes to us from Johnson & Johnson, where she led research for the Polymer and Surface Chemistry platform in an upstream R&D group for skin care brands such as Johnson’s® Baby, Neutrogena®, Aveeno®, RoC® and Clean & Clear®. She was a lead contributor on multiple high-priority projects (100+ million dollar market opportunities), lead contributor on 2 published patent applications and co-lead on multiple IP opportunities currently under development. In addition to strong technical abilities, Stacey excelled at bringing teams together and developed an initiative to foster a collaborative, learning environment which is now being deployed to over 100 researchers within Skin Care R&D and resulted in two leadership awards.
Stacey received her Ph.D. in Polymer Science from the University of Southern Mississippi under Professor Charles McCormick. Her graduate research, controlled radical polymerization of stimuli-responsive polymers, resulted in over 500 citations. Stacey is the recipient of the American Chemical Society Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research Award, Eastman Chemical Company Fellows Program, and Zeon Chemicals Graduate Service Award.
Stacey’s career began when she accepted an internship position at ChevronTexaco in the Bay Area one summer while still an undergrad at Louisiana College in Pineville. Raised in small-town Louisiana, it was her first time living outside of the deep south. She enjoyed experiencing the diverse culture offered by the Bay Area and big industry. Just seeing what an extremely large global company was like was eye opening. “I learned that I thrive in a lot of different cultural environments… I really enjoy meeting new people who are different from me. The more different, the more I have to learn.”
That summer and the following summer she spent at ChevronTexaco sealed her desire to work in industry. She applied to Southern Miss for her Ph.D. work in Polymer Science, drawn to its reputation for setting students on an industrial path. “They had a lot of connections with industry," Stacey says. She had offers from Roche, Oak Ridge National Labs, and Johnson & Johnson. Ultimately she decided a career developing technology for products that touch people's lives every day was an opportunity too exciting to pass up and joined J&J.
Stacey and her family moved to Eugene in January. She continued working for J&J remotely, but decided to consider local opportunities. Joining the Graduate Internship Program allows her to apply what she’s learned in industry in a new way. “I greatly enjoyed my time at J&J and it was a difficult decision to leave. However, I was very excited about the opportunities I would have with the internship program. I look forward to interfacing with a large number of R&D organizations and helping them fill their talent pipeline. I love empowering people to grow into their full potential and I believe in what the program does – giving students practical experience to springboard their careers in industry. It’s powerful – it gives young professionals an extra edge that would take most entry-level scientists 3-5 years to acquire.”
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