chemistry

Kathleen Gisser

Kathleen Gisser is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kathleen Gisser rather than just read about it. In short: Kathleen Collen Gisser is an American chemist known for her work in film products and architectural paint. As a senior staff scientist at Sherwin Williams, Gisser led the team responsible for the development of the first EPA-registered microbicidal paint.

Key takeaways

Kathleen Gisser belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kathleen Gisser to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kathleen Gisser from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kathleen Collen Gisser is an American chemist known for her work in film products and architectural paint. As a senior staff scientist at Sherwin Williams, Gisser led the team responsible for the development of the first EPA-registered microbicidal paint.

Early life and education Kathleen (née Collen) Gisser was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where she attended the Laurel High School in Shaker Heights. She later attended Yale University, where she double majored in classical civilization and chemistry. She went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison for graduate study in applied chemistry on metals and semiconductors, where she completed her Ph.D (1992) under the direction of Arthur B. Ellis, coauthoring several articles on nickel-titanium smart materials.

Career Gisser's first post following graduate school was at the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, N.Y., where her work focused on photographic/film technology. In the mid 1990s, Gisser had a role on the Kodak team that won a technical Oscar for a film product that fixed the "scratches and pops and dirt" on damaged copies of film reels. Gisser wrote the nomination for the award, and would later give a keynote at the American Chemical Society Presidential Event (1999), describing techniques related to this project. In the second phase of her career Gisser moved to Sherwin-Williams, where her focus moved to the development of new paint technologies. Paint materials were being rapidly adapted during this period, with a shift towards recipes deemed be less toxic or significantly lower in volatile organic compounds simultaneous with a drive for new markets and "performance features." In 2015, Gisser's team at Sherwin-WIlliams was responsible for the development of Paint Shield®, the first EPA-registered microbicidal paint. The CEO would tout the product as "one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in our nearly 150 year history of innovation." At that time, paints with applications for reducing bacterial levels of Staph and MRSA, were regarded as desirable for use by healthcare and athletic facilities. "These types of inventions are desperately needed...to prevent transmission [of] resistant bacteria." In subsequent years, use would be expanded "even [to] prefab military latrines."

Recognition A Sherwin-Williams Research Fellow, Gisser holds over a dozen patents in motion picture and photothermographic technology, and is the recipient of awards at both the corporate and national level. These include:

2021-2025 NSF TIP Award 2017, 2020 Percy Neyman Award 2010 Sherwin-Williams Innovation Excellence Award for Research and Development, Marketing and Technical Collaboration. 1995 Technical Academy Award for work in film at Eastman Kodak

References

External links Kathleen Gisser publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kathleen Gisser

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kathleen Gisser claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kathleen Gisser before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kathleen Gisser ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kathleen Gisser

In research: Kathleen Gisser appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kathleen Gisser in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kathleen Gisser is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century American chemists, 21st-century American chemists, American women chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kathleen Gisser outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Kathleen Gisser” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Kathleen Gisser in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kathleen Gisser means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kathleen Gisser out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kathleen Gisser in simple terms?

Why does Kathleen Gisser matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kathleen Gisser?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kathleen Gisser.