About Joshua U. Otaigbe, PhD, CEng, FIMMM, CSci, FAEng, FSPE

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Joshua U. Otaigbe

PhD, CEng, FIMMM, CSci, FAEng, FSPE

Founder & Principal, Flaney Associates, LLC
Professor Emeritus, The University of Southern Mississippi

PhD, polymer science and engineering, University of Manchester (UMIST), England, 1984
Formerly Senior Project Leader and Engineer, Corning Incorporated
Registered Chartered Engineer and Chartered Scientist (UK)
7 patents · 150+ refereed publications

Biography

I have had a professional career of more than forty years spanning the North American, European and African continents. I am the Founder and Principal of Flaney Associates, LLC, a technical consulting company that provides value-added materials engineering solutions and innovations to industry, and I am Professor Emeritus of Polymer Science & Engineering at The University of Southern Mississippi.

I specialise in polymer engineering and materials science, and I have held senior appointments in both industry and academia — including Senior Project Leader and Engineer at Corning Incorporated, and the Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair Professor in Engineering in France for 2013–2014, an appointment reserved for international scholars with substantial experience and publications in their fields.

I earned my PhD in polymer science and engineering from the University of Manchester (UMIST) in England in 1984. I joined The University of Southern Mississippi in 2002 as a professor of polymer engineering and science, following a career at Iowa State University as professor of chemical engineering and of materials science and engineering. From 2003 to 2012 I held invited visiting professorships at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) in Lyon, France, among other universities.

I hold seven patents and have authored more than 150 publications in refereed archival scientific and engineering journals and books. I am a registered Chartered Engineer, and my work is directed at translating strategic, value-added materials ideas into practice.

Approach

Large firms offer scale. This practice offers something different and narrower: direct, principal-level attention to the decision sitting behind the technical problem.

Break down complex concepts

Technical advice is only useful if the person who has to act on it can follow it. Findings are explained to the background and knowledge of the people receiving them — executives, engineers, or a court — without being diluted in the process.

Understand the goal, not just the question

Recommendations have to be financially and practically feasible with the resources you actually have. Understanding the objective and the constraints behind a request is what separates advice that gets implemented from advice that gets filed.

Avoid miscommunication

Technical advice communicated imprecisely leads to expensive decisions made on a misreading. Findings are stated with their limits attached, including what would change the conclusion.

Independence

No laboratory to keep busy, no product line to favour, no material to sell. Where the answer is that the problem does not need outside help, that is the answer you get.

Credentials, awards and honours

U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER AwardAwarded for early-career research and education excellence

Jefferson Science FellowU.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Fellow, Institute of Materials, Minerals & MiningUnited Kingdom

Fellow, Society of Plastics EngineersSPE

Fellow, Nigerian Academy of EngineeringFAEng

Tocqueville-Fulbright Distinguished ChairProfessor in Engineering, University of Lyon, France, 2013–2014

Registered Chartered Engineer (UK)CEng

Registered Chartered Scientist (UK)CSci

Cooper Distinguished Lectureship AwardGlass and Optical Materials Division, American Ceramic Society

Seven patentsIncluding U.S. Patent 6,171,433, recognised by the Iowa State University College of Engineering, 2001

150+ publicationsRefereed archival scientific and engineering journals and books

Best Paper — PolyolefinsSociety of Plastics Engineers, ANTEC’97

Academic appointments

Visiting Professor (invited), Department of Materials, Institute for Polymers, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Switzerland
Visiting Professor (invited), INSA de Lyon, Polymer Materials Engineering, LMM, UMR CNRS 5223, Lyon, France (sabbatical leave, 2009–2010)
Visiting Professor (invited), Université Jean Monnet, Faculté de Sciences et Techniques, Rheology & Polymer Materials Engineering, Saint-Étienne, France
Visiting professorship, University of Alberta, Canada
Elected to the Board of Directors, Society of Plastics Engineers — Engineering Properties and Structure Division

Frequently asked questions

Who will actually do the work?

The principal. Flaney Associates is a principal-led practice: the person you speak with first is the person who reviews the evidence, specifies the testing and signs the findings. Laboratory analysis is commissioned through university and industry partners, and the choice of laboratory and method is made for the question at hand.

Do you have your own laboratory?

No, and that is deliberate. Testing is specified through an established network of university and industry laboratory partners, with government national laboratories available through collaborators where a specialised resource is required. Independence from any one facility means the method is selected to answer the question rather than to fill the instrument that is already owned.

What size of problem is worth bringing to you?

The useful test is not the size of the company but the cost of the decision. If a failure, a substitution, a scrap rate or a dispute carries enough financial or legal consequence that being wrong is expensive, it is worth an independent view. If it does not, you will be told that in the first conversation.

How do engagements usually start?

With a short conversation about what is happening, what it is costing and what decision is waiting on it. That is normally enough to establish whether independent technical review is warranted, what it would involve and roughly what it would take. A written scope follows before any work begins.

Can you work with our existing suppliers and laboratories?

Yes. Where you already have testing arrangements or a relationship with a resin supplier’s technical service group, that work can be specified, reviewed and interpreted rather than duplicated.

We are an attorney’s office. How should we make first contact?

Through the conflict check form, with the party names and the technical subject matter only. Do not send case details, documents, samples or privileged material before an engagement agreement is in place.

Is the initial conversation confidential?

Enquiries are treated as confidential. That said, please do not send confidential samples, files or evidence before an engagement agreement is in place — for your protection as much as anything else, particularly where a matter may become contested.

Next Step

Get Clarity Before the Next Costly Decision

A short conversation is usually enough to tell whether independent technical review is worth it — and if it is not, you will be told so.

Manufacturers & product teams

Discuss Your Challenge

Describe what is happening, what it is costing and what decision is waiting on it. You will get a direct assessment of whether and how this can be investigated.

Discuss Your Challenge

Attorneys

Request a Confidential Conflict Check

Send the parties and the technical subject matter only — no case details, no documents. Conflicts are cleared before any substantive discussion takes place.

Request a Conflict Check