Speakers set for 44th annual Tire Society conference

Akron, OH – The Tire Society announces its 44th Annual Conference, to be held September 23-25, 2025, at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio. The Conference theme is Rolling Towards Sustainability: Tires for A Greener Future. This premier technical event for new tire science and technology will include a Keynote Address, a Plenary Lecture, an awards banquet with an invited speaker, and more than twenty-five technical presentations by tire scientists from around the world. Registration includes play-on-demand replays of the technical presentations and annual Tire Society membership, which provides full access to over 50 years of articles from the Journal of Tire Science and Technology.

This year’s Keynote Address will be delivered by Dr. Surendra Chawla. Dr. Chawla, spent 40 years at Goodyear, rising through a number of positions to the Director of Corporate Research and retiring as Senior Director, Global Innovation. At Goodyear Dr. Chawla led teams focused on exploring, assessing, and bringing into Goodyear new technologies for sustainable product and process leadership. He was also involved with creating new business opportunities in the Connected,

Autonomous, Shared and Electrical (CASE) vehicle mobility space. His contributions to tire science are widespread, ranging from teaching young engineers at the University of Akron to a being a founder of the Goodyear Institute of Technology, to creating an R&D open innovation network of universities, research institutes, national labs, and industrial partners.

After his retirement, Dr. Chawla joined the Polymer Industry Cluster as Leading Consultant during its startup phase, culminating with the Greater Akron region being designated as the Sustainable Polymers Tech Hub by the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA), winning a sizable grant for this designation as well as earning an Innovation Hub award from the State of Ohio. His experience is well aligned with our Conference sustainability theme.

For the first time, the Plenary Lecture will be delivered by two speakers, both from Michelin. Frederic Biesse is a Senior Fellow, Tire Physics and Performance Modelling and Damien Lim is a Senior Principal Researcher, Physics and Modelling.

Mr. Biesse has worked for 26 years at Michelin’s Clermont-Ferrand R&D Center, in France, focusing on noise, wear, and rolling resistance, rising to Manager of the Tire Performance Analysis team. Mr. Lim has worked for 14 years at the Michelin Americas R&D Center, with experience in Test Engineering and NVH and is currently specializing in fundamental studies on tire wear and the development of predictive tools and testing for the Tire Wear Performance team.
Also in keeping with the sustainability theme, this year’s Banquet Speaker will be Scott Sass, Director of Technology at Alterra Energy, LLC. Alterra has developed a continuous thermochemical liquefaction (pyrolysis) process, operated at scale, to recycle plastics that cannot typically be recycled into feedstock for manufacturing new plastics. Founded in 2009 as a small garage operation, Alterra currently processes 60 tons of plastics per day in its pilot plant, applying its advanced recycling technology to reduce plastic pollution. This important work addresses the challenging issue that only 10% of plastics are recycled and contributes to the Circular Economy.

The Tire Society is the world’s leading technical organization for the advancement of tire science, engineering, and technology. Its non-profit mission is to disseminate knowledge and stimulate scientific and engineering development in tires.

For more information about the Conference, contact conference@tiresociety.org or visit the website www.tiresociety.org.