Dr. Donald H. Sebastian is senior vice president for research and development and a professor of the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department at New Jersey Institute of Technology.  His professional expertise is in integrated product and process design, polymer processing, and reaction engineering, with a special emphasis in computer-based technologies for research and education.

Professor Sebastian has been central to a number of large scale institutional initiatives since joining NJIT.  He was the author of New Jersey's successful proposal to form a statewide manufacturing extension program as part of the national network of centers supported by NIST's Manufacturing Extension Partnership.  Six-year funding from the state and federal government is roughly $12M.  He served as start-up director until the program was successfully established as a not-for-profit corporation hosted at the university, and continues as a member of the NJMEP board of directors.  Professor Sebastian was a technical leader in formulating a new engineering center dedicated to building the technologies for multi-lifecycle engineering research (MERC). and a co-principal investigator on the NJ Commission on Science and Technology's $5M grant to launch the effort.  He has been the program director for a major state initiative to define and develop personalized weapons technology that has produced a patented biometric identification system leading to several million dollar sin external support.  He is currently spearheading a statewide plan to create nano-technology consortium that incorporates over $100M of cleanroom process technology at Lucent Bell Laboratories.

Previously, as leader of the Center for Manufacturing Systems, Professor Sebastian was instrumental in building cost effective delivery of product and process engineering services for the state's small to medium sized manufacturers.  He restructured the Advanced Manufacturing Lab to support a five-fold increase in project work, and operate with full recovery of costs.  In addition, he has broadened the center's focus to integrate a polymer processing effort, programs in international trade assistance, and a new initiative in electronic enterprise engineering.  Professor Sebastian serves on the advisory committee for a number of dissertation projects, has developed and taught new courses in design and production as part of the Gateway initiative, and is the principal systems architect for the multi-media based instructional technology used in the SMART Force coalition between US Army, General Motors, Raytheon, ISI, and NJIT.

Prior to joining NJIT, Dr. Sebastian was a professor of chemical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, where he was a member of the faculty since completion of his PhD in 1977. Professor Sebastian was co-founder of the Design and Manufacturing Institute at Stevens in 1989, and was an original co-director. He was principal investigator on over $25M in external funding to support this activity. He had full technical responsibility for the experimental and computational work conducted within DMI that was dedicated to establishing a science-based foundation for integrated product and process design and is using engineering thermoplastics and their composites as the first area of concentration. He has been awarded a pioneering patent covering the integrated product and process methodology that is being exploited through the DMI program of development.

Dr. Sebastian has been involved in the numerical analysis and simulation of chemical and polymer processing operations throughout his academic career, applying his interest and expertise in software to both research and teaching. Dr. Sebastian held the position of head of Computation and Information Technology for the Polymer Processing Institute and was the project manager and principal author of the commercial software package, PASS, which includes design tools for extrusion, die design, mold filling, and rheological analysis. His work in super-computer analysis of polymer processing equipment was regularly featured in the literature of the NSF sponsored John Von Neumann Center. He is co-author of  "Principles of Polymerization Engineering" with Dr. J.A. Biesenberger, a contributing editor to the first text on computer techniques for polymer processing, "Computer-Aided Design for Injection Molding", with Ernest Bernhardt, and is a contributor to several other reference volumes on polymer processing that are currently in press.

Professor Sebastian's expertise and enthusiasm extends beyond the laboratory. He has attracted significant funding for curricular development activities that bring new technology to the classroom, and involve students in both development and implementation. He was principal investigator of a major program in undergraduate computing that was awarded over $1M in external funding from 1983-87. Sponsors included the Exxon Educational Foundation, E.I. DuPont, AlliedSignal Foundation, the State of New Jersey, and Stevens' first-ever grant from the US Department of Higher Education's highly competitive Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE). His early work in applications of network technology developed in this program won the best paper award in the 1985 Digital Equipment Users Group inaugural refereed paper competition.

Professor Sebastian advised a variety of student organizations including the Honor Board and the Ski Team. The students of the class of 1990 honored him with the dedication of their yearbook, and was recognized as the 1991 recipient of the Henry Morton Distinguished Teaching Professor Award.

He received his Bachelor of Engineering at Stevens, graduating as valedictorian of the class of 1974, followed by a Master's of Engineering in 1975, and the PhD in chemical engineering in 1977. He resides in Randolph, NJ with his wife Catherine and daughters Caitlyn and Diana.