Drawing on over 15 years of industrial research and development experience at Dow, alumna Stephanie Potisek Lee (Ph.D., ’08) gave Illinois Chemistry graduate students an inside look at how research in industry translates into the development of new products.
As the 2026 Sylvia Stoesser Lecturer, Potisek Lee returned to the Illinois campus on June 5, 2026, to deliver two lectures and to spend time talking with graduate students about her career at Dow, where she is currently Associate R&D Director and R&D Strategy Leader and works in the Sylvia Stoesser Center at Dow’s Midland, Michigan, location.
“I was incredibly honored and really excited when I got the invitation to come as a speaker,” said Potisek Lee, who came to Illinois after graduating from Cornell University with a B.A. in chemistry. At Illinois, she worked in the lab of chemistry Prof. Jeffrey Moore, synthesizing linked functionalized polymers and investigating mechanochemical reactivity for the development of self-assessing mechanochromic materials.
During the first of two lectures on June 5, Potisek Lee shared some background information about Stoesser, who was the first woman chemist hired by Dow in 1929.
Potisek Lee explained that women rarely entered the research or industrial workforce, at that time, and it took personal approval of H.H. Dow for her to be hired. She was known as the “nasal chemist” because she would often identify the components of unknown lab mixtures simply by smelling them. She worked on the development of products for heat transfer media, synthetic lubricating oil, and high temperature lubricants. She was also the first to make organic inhibitors for acids in oil well treatment. Additional contributions included the use of ferric chloride, processes for perchloroethylene, styrene, polystyrene, and dry-cleaning applications for the use of perchloroethylene. Stoesser earned 29 patents during her career as a research scientist.
The Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois initiated the Sylvia Stoesser Lecture series in 2000 with generous support from Dow AgroSciences and Illinois Chemistry alumna Yulan Tong. The lecture highlights Stoesser as an early pioneer for women in chemistry, and it provides new perspectives in the chemical field outside of academia.
In 2008, Potisek Lee started her career at Dow as a senior scientist in a rotational assignments program, working on epoxies for electronics and circuit board applications. Later, she moved into R&D in oil, gas, and water and took on her first leadership role for the oil sands R&D group. After seven years, she moved to a subsidiary of Dow called Univation to lead a technical service team and an R&D team in licensing the processes to make polyethylene. That was followed by a move to Dow’s main polyethylene division, where she led a low-density polyethylene team, a mechanical recycling team, and a digital R&D team. And then came the opportunity for the position she currently holds as R&D strategy leader, doing a variety of tasks in support of the chief technology officer, who oversees all R&D at Dow.
Potisek Lee has contributed to over 13 patents at Dow. She also received an Edison Award and was honored as an R&D 100 finalist.