Rosemarie Wesson

Rosemarie Wesson is the Associate Vice Chancellor and University Vice Provost for Research at The City University of New York. She was the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan. She has worked at the National Science Foundation, Louisiana State University and Dow Chemical Company.

Education Wesson was born in Illinois. Wesson studied chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After her degree, she joined Dow Chemical Company as a researcher in polymer rheology.

Career After completing her PhD, Wesson returned to Dow Chemical Company. Her focus was on sustainable chemistry, engineering and materials. After working at NSF, Wesson became principal researcher at Battelle Memorial Institute, where she developed the Odyssey Atlasphere. She has served on their board of directors and won the 2014 Minority Action Committee Eminent Chemical Engineers Award for services to minority groups.

Research Dr. Wesson has authored and co-authored numerous technical papers in the area of numerical analyses of polymer crystallization kinetics, structure property relationships of crystalline materials, and finite-element analyses of polymeric flows.