May 31, 2016
Colleague Focus – Meet George Lin
This edition of our Colleague Focus features Mr. George Lin.
George serves as the Principal Scientist for Mar-Bal and works at our Research and Development Center located in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. George recently celebrated his 25th year with Mar-Bal as he joined the company May 15, 1991. George has an expanded focus on consulting with, and mentoring, our young engineers so that they can be exposed to the knowledge George has amassed during his 25-plus years successfully developing and optimizing thermoset composite material technology.
We asked George what his favorite part about working for Mar-Bal is and he replied, “I have the freedom to work my way on projects. I get the full supports from the owners, the management team, the engineering term, the process team at all three plants and my own team at the materials engineering group.”
When asked to name his proudest moment at Mar-Bal, George eloquently explained, “I started at 
Mar-Bal in 1991 and by the end of 1992, GE Transportation needed a new generation of high temperature material. There were two or three competitors bidding for the same job. I was new in our industry, with only a little over one year experience. I was worried and Jim Balogh (Founder of Mar-Bal) didn’t say anything, but he also had his worry on his face. We didn’t have any tools at the time to work on the material either. We had only an oven, a simple table top flexure tester with the capacity of testing to maybe 500 pounds with one cavity test bar mold. I had one helper, technician Tom Reed. He taught me how to make lab batches and other activities when I started at Mar-Bal. I read all the articles that I could find about high temperature materials. We talked with suppliers about high temperature resins, antioxidants and other ingredients. We made a lot of batches, test bars, and tested them before and after heat. Finally, we got the best combination of the formulation that we didn’t have before – and it beat the competitors. We got the job! As a reward for all of our hard work, Jim gave me a big Christmas bonus.”
George has a Bachelor’s degree in Polymer Technology from Nanjing University of Chemical Technology in Nanjing, China and Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from West Virginia Institute of Technology.
We then asked George how Mar-Bal has helped him with his career development and he responded, “Mar-Bal has always trusted me on my technical capabilities and judgments. In addition, Mar-Bal has shown plenty of patience with me to allow my way to finish projects. I basically can go to any technical meetings and trainings that I am interested.”
When we asked George about his favorite home cooked meal, he shared, “It is braised Beef Shank but since it is high in cholesterol, I don’t eat it too much.” He also explained his personal vacation spot as, “It changes. I liked Florida before but now since I just came back from New Zealand, I say it is New Zealand. I don’t like the long flight though, so I’ll search in the U.S. next time.”
We then asked George, who is someone that you look up to and why? George explained, “I am old enough not to look up to anyone any more. But I do admire the Americans who set up the federal constitutional republic system. I do hope one day China can adapt the same system.”
Thank you for your hard work, George! You are truly an inspiration to us all.
We are very proud to call you a colleague.