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In Memoriam
James Crivello
(1940 - 2015)
It is with great sadness that we report the passing of James Crivello, professor of chemistry and chemical biology on February 25, 2015.
Dr. Crivello joined Rensselaer in 1988 after completing a very successful industrial career of 22 years at the General Electric Research and Development Center, where he was elected a Coolidge Fellow. Throughout his career at Rensselaer, he has been a valued and productive researcher and teacher in the areas of organic chemistry and synthetic polymer chemistry. His contributions in the field of additive manufacturing and 3D printing remain very influential; his invention of a new class of photoinitiators, also known as 'Crivello Salts,' designed for inducing cationic polymerization of epoxy resins, opened the door for the first wave of additive manufacturing systems. Most of the current 3D imaging and printing technology in use today employs epoxy resin technology and cure chemistry based on work done in his laboratory. A measure of his scholarly activity is demonstrated by more than 330 publications, 144 patents, 15 book chapters, and three books to his credit.
During his industrial career, Dr. Crivello received numerous awards recognizing the importance of his work, including two IR-100 awards by Research & Development magazine. For the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Polymer Science, the editors selected Dr. Crivello's paper on the photodecomposition of sulfonium salts as a means for microelectronic patterning and additive manufacturing as one of the 50 most influential papers that had been published in that journal since its inception.
In addition to his research activities, Dr. Crivello also served the polymer community through his participation as a member at large of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) in the American Chemical Society (ACS), and by organizing and teaching several short courses and workshops on radiation curing of coatings. For many years, he served as an Associate Editor for Chemistry of Materials, a flagship ACS journal in the interdisciplinary area of chemistry and materials. He was elected a fellow of the PMSE and also named a fellow of the ACS. In 2014 he was honored with the Tess Award at the annual ACS meeting for his significant contributions to coatings science technology and engineering.
Dr. Crivello received his B.S. in chemistry from Aquinas College and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame for his work in organic chemistry.
