Key Staff
The people who make up Adherent Laboratories have a wealth of experience in various adhesive, sealant, and coating technologies including hot melt, water base, acrylic, urethane and epoxy. They are chemists and managers and prior to joining Adherent Laboratories most were with some of the world’s largest and most respected adhesives companies. They collectively hold numerous patents and are widely recognized as leaders within the industry.
Tom Quinn
Tom founded Adherent Laboratories in 2002 and is currently its CEO/Chairman of the Board. He has worked in the adhesives industry for over 40 years, specializing in hot melt adhesives of all kinds, but especially PSA’s, nonwovens, packaging, labeling, and structural. In his career he has served as primary technical liaison with raw material suppliers, headed a hot melt R&D laboratory for 13 years, and was the leader of a hot melt core competency laboratory. He holds a number of patents and has considerable experience in manufacturing, technology transfer, product line strategy, laboratory management, and laboratory information systems.
Tom graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota with a B.A. degree in Chemistry.
Paul Meyer
Paul is President of Adherent Laboratories, and has more than 25 years’ experience in the adhesives and plastics industry. Paul has been a hot melt development chemist for assembly applications, a strategic business manager for a large plastic company, and has experience as a product manager for foam-in-place materials. In his career he has served as a technical manager interfacing with customers and converting customer needs into commercial solutions. Paul has also worked in the venture capital area screening investment candidates. He holds a number of patents and is the inventor of desiccated matrix for Intercept sealed insulating glass process.
Paul has a B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, and a M.B.A. degree from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN. He is also a Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.
Steve Albrecht
Steve started with Adherent in 2014 and is now Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, with 16 years of experience in the adhesive industry. He has experience in hot melt formulation, applications, and raw material evaluation as well as experience in the development of new applications for packaging. Steve worked as formulating chemist, group leader and laboratory manager. He has also worked as a business development manager in a different industry developing customer relationships, technical consultation, and project management.
Steve holds a B. S. degree in Chemistry from Arizona State University, and a Ph. D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Glen Dawson
Glen has been involved with Adherent Laboratories since 2004. Before coming to Adherent, Glen worked at a leading adhesive company for 27 years. He started his career there in the analytical laboratory where he specialized in thermal analysis. He went on to become an expert in formulating hot melt, water base and moisture cure adhesives for the footwear industry. He spent a number of years living in China, working with footwear manufacturers to solve their adhesive problems. He was granted a U.S. patent for a hot melt adhesive used in the footwear industry and is a co-inventor on several other hot melt adhesive patents.
Glen holds a B.S. degree in Chemistry from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also founder of Surface Knowledge Systems, LLC of St. Paul, Minnesota, a consultancy specializing in surface treatment technologies.
Paul Giordano
Paul is a technology development specialist with proven abilities in strategic planning, understanding technology important to the business, and improving the competitive position of a company. One of his special skills lies in identifying customer needs, developing performance requirements, and implementing new business opportunities. In his long career Paul worked as a research scientist with state of the art expertise in polymer technology, material science, molecular spectroscopy, and surface modification. He was also a technical director in the polymer and water base development area, and a team leader for raw material strategic sourcing, as well as the director of an analytical group.
Paul received an A.B. from Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Fred Gustafson
Fred has 34 years of laboratory experience with a major consumer and industrial products company. He started his career in the corporate analytical lab specializing in gas and liquid chromatography. He then moved to a consumer products division where he worked on tapes, labels, flags, and notes. His responsibilities included test method development, failure mode analysis, quality improvement, product development, and product engineering. Fred is an expert in acrylic adhesives, repositionable adhesives, film, paper, and interfacial adhesion. He has experience with UV polymerization of acrylates. He also worked on product sustainability issues such as environmental aspects of paper and film, paper chain of custody, and recyclability of adhesive coated products. Fred currently holds seven patents and is the author of two ASTM specifications and five TLMI (Tag and Label Manufacturers Institute) test protocols. He has been a member of the American Chemical Society, ASTM, TAPPI and TLMI.
Fred has a B. S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Minnesota and a Ph. D degree in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin.
Shelley Kueppers
Shelley has 19 years of experience as a research chemist in the adhesives industry. She has an extensive background in hot melt packaging adhesives including adhesive design and formulation, raw material evaluation and testing, test method design and adhesive packaging applications. She has been awarded numerous certificates of recognition, Technical Achievement Awards, the E-Award for Excellence and patents for her work in developing hot melt adhesives for customers and the industry as a whole. She has formulated hot melt adhesives that continue to be industry standards in the area of hot melt packaging.
Shelley holds a B. A. degree in chemistry from the College of St. Benedict and an M. S. degree in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Minnesota under Dr. Robert Vince.
Dick Lindmark
Dick has over 40 years’ experience in the adhesives and plastics industry. During his career Dick was a development chemist and managed technical development groups in solvent, hot melt, water base, emulsion polymers and reactive adhesives. He was operations manager for hot melt plants, led market development teams in PSA’s, UV coatings, foam-in-place gaskets and reactive hot melts. He led market research activities, acquisition teams and was on several patent litigation teams. Dick has been a global technical manager, global product manager, and strategic business manager. He holds over a dozen patents and has made numerous presentations on adhesive technology to industry and academic conferences.
Dick has a B.A. degree in Chemistry and a M.B.A. degree in Marketing and Finance, both from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. In addition to his consulting activities for Adherent, Dick is a member of Adherent's Board of Directors, the President of Boese-Warner & Associates, Inc., a business development consulting company specializing in market planning and the COO of Lindmark Development, an optical device R&D company.
David Malcolm
David is a recent addition to Adherent Laboratories. He has nearly 40 years of experience in the adhesives industry. His experience is in thermoplastic hot melts and also reactive moisture curing systems. He originally was hired by Tom Quinn, and in the early days, focused on PSA’s for Non-woven and Hygiene applications. Later developed hot melt adhesives for packaging and graphic arts applications. At various points in his career, functioned as group leader, project manager and mentor to young chemists and engineers. David started as a technician in the hot melt laboratory yet rose to the rank of Research Fellow on the strength of substantial new product development, and product commercialization. He also worked as part of raw material sourcing team for Hot Melt applications and was Technical Manager of the Reactive Adhesives Strategic Sourcing Team and authored the Strategic Sourcing plan for reactive moisture curing hot melt adhesives. David has been listed as inventor or co-inventor on nearly 30 patents in various hot melt technologies.
Elaya Perumal
Elaya is a polymer chemist experienced in synthesis of polymers and process optimization. He has 6 years of post-doctoral experience in synthesizing acrylic polymers for optics industry and water soluble acrylic polymers for the oil recovery industry. He has 20 years of industry experience developing polymeric materials for contact lens, intraocular lens, dental cavity filling materials, biodegradable stent, drug release coating and blood compatible coating for medical devices. He also has experience in surface modification of polymer substrates and polymer and silica particles for attaching bioactive agents, formulation development for filtration membranes and chemical, physical and mechanical testing of polymers. His responsibilities included test method development, failure mode analysis, quality improvement, product development, and product engineering. Elaya is an expert in acrylic adhesives used in medical devices industry. He has experience with bonding components of medical devices using UV curing and anaerobic adhesives. He uses Six Sigma methodologies and Design of Experiments effectively in problem solving and process optimization.
Elaya has MSc and PhD degrees in Chemistry from the University of Madras, India. He is a member of American Chemical Society, American Society for Quality and Project Management Institute.
Walt Shoemaker
Walt has over 40 years of experience in the adhesive industry. He has an extensive history working with water based and solvent based adhesive, sealant, and primer technologies. Specific areas he focused on include, flexible duct assemblies, HVAC market, office furniture systems, structural wall and building panels and ceiling tile assemblies. Walt also has a strong background in UL certifications.
Walt earned a B. S. degree in Chemistry at the University of Minnesota in Duluth, Minnesota.
Roger Worm
Roger has over 35 years’ of experience in the plastics industry. During his early career, Roger managed custom compression molded thermoset and injection molded thermoplastic operations as well as performed outside technical services in the thermoset polyester industry. He has served as an R&D manager, tooling manager, and product manager for a molded plastics supplier in the retail, food service and packaged foods industries. He has consulted on design and material selection for microwaveable food containers for all the major packaged food processors in the U.S. and has received a CLEO award for his efforts. He has served as a senior project manager and later general manager of a contract research & development firm. He headed up projects in new product conceptualization, product development and material formulation, process development, materials manufacturing, post-launch quality/cost initiatives, and scientific analysis and method development.
Roger has a B.S. in Business Administration and a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Chemistry. Roger is the President of RWS, Inc., a product development consulting company. He is also a board member and treasurer of the Nicollet-East Harriet Business Association in Minneapolis, MN.
