Atlanta, Georgia-- February 3, 2005-- With the completion on December 31, 2004 of the integration of IPST into Georgia Tech, Woody Rice's assignment as President of IPST has also been completed and IPST at Georgia Tech is now in the very capable hands of Dr. Jim Frederick,Director.  "This is the beginning of an exciting new era for IPST after 75 years as a paper industry funded, graduate research institute, the biggest and best in the world and it is now well positioned to be even bigger, better, and global.  For me it is the culmination of thirteen interesting and enjoyable years as Vice President and President of IPST and of over 50 years in the pulp and paper industry", said Rice.  Woody plans to stay somewhat involved in various industry related activities.

Woody was elected President of the Institute of Paper Science and Technology on July 1, 2003, where from 1993-2003 he had served as Vice President, Business Development and External Affairs.  IPST was the world's largest pulp and paper research university with an annual budget as high as $23 million, a student enrollment of 85 (all at the Masters and Ph.D. level), and conducting $15 million of pulp and paper research annually.  Support came from the worldwide paper industry's membership dues, contract research and other services such as the abstract bulletin, information database, process engineering, etc.

His role as Vice President was to develop and maintain industry support, long-range government funding, and member company relations (e.g., Georgia Pacific, Weyerhaeuser, International Paper, UPM-Kymmene, Honeywell-Measurex, Procter & Gamble, etc.). Prior to election to Vice President at IPST, he served some 18 months as a consultant to the President developing a marketing plan and bringing a business and strategy focus to the Institute.

For 35 years Woody worked for Hercules Inc., a multibillion dollar, Wilmington, Delaware chemical company.  Almost his entire career there was in the Paper Technology Group, the largest supplier of paper chemicals to the worldwide paper industry, where he rose from technical service engineer through many levels of sales and general management to Group Vice President of the Paper Technology Group.  In later years he led expansion into Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan and Japan, Brazil, while maintaining overall responsibility for this world-wide business. 

During this period he served on nine company boards in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Indonesia, Korea, and Australia and developed excellent rapport with many senior industry officials in the offshore countries with whom he still maintains close relationships.

Woody served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Paper Industry Management Association (PIMA), a 5,000 member group dedicated to paper industry management issues.  He served as National PIMA Chairman and for several years on the Board of Directors.  He has served on the Board of Directors of the Pulp and Paper School Foundations at both North Carolina State University and the University of Maine.  He also has been a member of various corporate industry boards including St. Laurent Pulp and Paper, Deveron Incorporated, Resolution Sciences Incorporated, etc.

Woody was born in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada in 1930 and attended schools in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, where he worked summers at Howard Smith Paper Mills (Domtar).

He attended the Royal Military College in Kingston and McGill University (Electrical Engineering).

He is married to Jeannette, lives in Wilmington, DE, Atlanta, GA, and Hilton Head Island, has five children, enjoys travel, woodworking, and working in real estate.

Woody's e-mail address not surprisingly is WoodyPaper@AOL.COM.