Van Ness has received a $2.35 R&D Excellence Program grant from the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology. Additional government, foundation and industry funding brings the grant to $7.7 million. The five-year project, in collaboration with Rutgers and Princeton universities, will create an interdisciplinary center serving industry and academia in the development and commercialization of IMPBS.

The multi-year grant will enable Van Ness and his colleagues to concentrate on the processing and characterization of a number of new Immiscible Polymer Blends (IMPBS,) which are blends of two plastics which normally do not mix well.

Van Ness, the winner of an Edison Patent Award, helped develop an IMPB with unusually superior mechanical strength that is being used to produce commercial railroad ties now in use at various metro and subway systems nationally.