Senior TS&D Director

Dow Consumer Solutions

Xiaodong (Shel) Zhang is currently Senior TS&D Director in Dow Consumer Solutions.  Shel leads a global team of technical service and development professionals and has responsibility of talent management, implementation of innovation strategy, customer collaboration and application development in consumer markets.

Shel joined Dow in 2003 as a Senior Specialist in the Personal Care business. He led the development and commercialization of four new products with key brand owners. In 2007, he joined Dow Wolff Cellulosics as a global R&D leader for the Food and Nutrition business, where he drove the growth of an innovation portfolio in key health & nutrition areas that resulted in multiple new product launches. Shel was Associate R&D Director in P&SP from 2010-2018 and led the Wire & Cable R&D organization. His team had responsibility for providing technology expertise in polymer research, formulation development, application development, electrical characterization, and process R&D for the power and data transmission industry.  In 2018, Shel was named R&D Director for Chemical Science in Core R&D. He had responsibility for global capability development focused on synthetic organic, inorganic and polymer technologies as well as homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis.  In 2020, Shel was named Senior R&D and TS&D Director for the Home and Personal Care markets in Dow Consumer Solutions.  He had responsibility for development and commercialization of a more sustainable product innovation pipeline of new products.   Prior to joining Dow, Shel was a Lead Manager at Unilever from 2000-2003 where he and his team focused on skin cleansing and skin care technology.  From 1998-2000, he worked for 3M in the field of dental restorative materials, where he developed novel radiopaque nano-composite formulation in the dental industry.

Shel is a member of the American Chemical Society and served as a board member of the Tri-State Chinese-American Chemical Society, a board member for Household & Commercial Products Association (HCPA)  and a technical advisory board member for Rutgers University's College of Chemistry & Chemical Biology.

Shel received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Cooper Union in New York in 1994 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in the field of polymer science from the University of Minnesota in 1998.