Catherine Hunt

Senior R&D Director External Science and Technology

Catherine T. (Katie) Hunt, is the Senior R&D Director for External Technology at The Dow Chemical Company. In this role she works to build partnerships across the company with industry, academia, and national labs in conjunction with government agencies and private foundations to address such pressing global challenges as the sustainability of energy, food and water.

For more than 25 years, Katie held positions of increasing responsibility at Rohm and Haas: from research scientist to plant laboratory manager to global analytical network director to technology partnerships leader, and ultimately, to corporate sustainability director. In 2005, she was elected President of the American Chemical Society for the 2007 calendar year, and conducted her highly successful term with a three-part platform promoting Education, Collaboration and Innovation.   

Over her professional career, Dr. Hunt has received many acknowledgements and awards. She is a member of the MIT Visiting Committee for the Department of Chemical Engineering, was selected as one of Pennsylvania's “50 Best Women in Business” by Governor Ed Rendell (2007) was named Outstanding Alumna of the Year at UC Davis (2008), is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and an inaugural Fellow of the American Chemical Society (2009), a member of the National Academies Science and Technology Sustainability Roundtable (2009), and was awarded the Smith Medal from the Board of Trustees (2007).

Katie received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Davis in 1981, and completed a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University.