Jeff Lindsay (engineer)

Jeffrey Dean Lindsay is an intellectual property strategist currently working as the head of intellectual property for a large Asian company, Asia Pulp and Paper. He is a former Fortune 500 corporate patent strategist, former business consultant, professor, author, apologist, chemical engineer, paper industry expert and patent agent with over 100 US patents who received attention defending The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on his website at jefflindsay.com and LDS blogs. He is the lead author of Conquering Innovation Fatigue: Overcoming the Barriers to Personal and Corporate Success (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2009), which shortly after publication in June 2009 was named by BusinessWeek as one of its top 20 new book recommendations for summer reading. Prior to his current professional position as Head of Intellectual Property at Asia Pulp & Paper in Shanghai, China, he was the director of Solution Development at Innovation Edge, corporate patent strategist and senior research fellow at Kimberly-Clark Corporation in Neenah, Wisconsin, as well as an associate professor at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He also served as chair of the Forest Bioproducts Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers from 2007 to 2011. In 2012 he received AIChE's Andrew Chase Award from the Forest Bioproducts Division for his service to the industry and AIChE, and in 2013 he was named a fellow of AIChE. In 2015, another professional society, TAPPI (Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industries) published an article about his professional and volunteer activities in their "Member Spotlight" on their website. He has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Brigham Young University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. He currently lives in China, where he is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars on intellectual property, innovation, and the paper industry. LDS apologetics: Apart from his professional activities, he is also known for his writings dealing with the purported plausibility of the Book of Mormon and to a lesser extent for his work in Mormon history, in particular responding to various statements from anti-Mormon sources and frequently asked questions about the LDS Church. His writings are primarily on his website at JeffLindsay.com, particularly his LDSFAQ section (LDS Frequently Asked Questions), though he has blogged regularly on the Mormanity Blog since 2004. More recently, he was selected as one of the bloggers for Orson Scott Card's Nauvoo Times where he blogs weekly. The Mormon Interpreter, a pro-LDS website featuring scholarship and apologetics, prominently featured Lindsay in the 2014 article "Eye of the Beholder, Law of the Harvest: Observations on the Inevitable Consequences of the Different Investigative Approaches of Jeremy Runnells and Jeff Lindsay" by Kevin Christensen. According to Christensen, Lindsay deals with the issues raised in Runnells' popular critical work "at greater length, over a much broader span of time, consulting a wider range of sources, providing far more documentation, and including far more original research than Runnells." Original contributions from Lindsay mentioned include his satirical treatment of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as "evidence" of Book of Mormon plagiarism as well as treatments of the Book of Abraham and other topics. At the Mormon Interpreter, Lindsay has also been cited for a "thoughtful blog response to a New York Times article". Several of Lindsay's writings have been published or cross-posted at another pro-LDS website, FAIRMormon.org, including his analysis of a critical response to one aspect of the Arabian Peninsula evidence for the Book of Mormon. Lindsay has written an article Does DNA Evidence Refute the Book of Mormon?, in which he concluded that many Latter-day Saints incorrectly assumed that Lehi's group was the primary genetic source for all Native Americans and recommended that such errant assumptions be abandoned. Additionally, he noted that the Book of Mormon does not make such claims regarding Lehi and therefore only encourages a more enlightened view rather than complete abandonment of the Book of Mormon. This was one of the early articles on DNA-Book of Mormon issues noted by the Church and made available as a PDF file on their LDS Newsroom at LDS.org. Lindsay's work in Mormon history has attracted the attention of various Mormon research groups, including the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. Some of Lindsay's claims have been criticized. For example, Richard Abanes, a writer critical of Mormonism, refers to Lindsay's work as "numerous self-published articles, not scholarly, extremely biased, articles often based on misinformation". Some LDS people also disagree with some of Lindsay's viewpoints. Professional career: From 2007 to 2011, Lindsay served as chair of the Forest Bioproducts Division (formerly the Forest Products Division) of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The Division "promotes knowledge sharing and networking on topics dealing with products (materials, chemicals, and energy) obtained from forest resources and other lignocellulosic materials" and deals with "pulp and paper, forest products and associated industries, bio-based composites, biomass processing, biorefineries and a variety of other products and processes." Lindsay has been involved in various leadership roles with the Division since his days as a faculty member (assistant and later associate professor) at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology on the Georgia Tech Campus (originally the Institute of Paper Chemistry in Appleton, Wisconsin), where he was employed from 1987 to 1994. He was recognized by AIChE with both the Division-related Andrew Chase Award in 2012 and by being recognized as a fellow of the Society in 2014. Lindsay has published more than 50 technical papers, including several dealing with the use of fluid dynamics in the paper and pulp industry for the Tappi Journal by the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry. In his previous position at Kimberly-Clark as corporate patent strategist and senior research fellow, he was an inventor, listed or co-listed on more than 100 United States patents filed for his employer, in the fields of chemical treatments of cellulose, RFID-related products, personal care products and paper engineering. Lindsay currently works as head of intellectual property at Asia Pulp and Paper in China, where he has been since 2011. From 2007 to 2011 he was director of Solution Development at Innovation Edge, a consulting firm in Neenah, Wisconsin. He was at Kimberly-Clark Corporation in Neenah, Wisconsin, from 1994 to 2007, where he became corporate patent strategist and senior research fellow. Prior to that he was assistant professor and then associate professor at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology, now the Renewable Bioproducts Institute at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. In his role at IPST, his research received several awards, such as the 1988 George Olmsted Award from the American Paper Institute (now AF&PA) for best technical paper (shared with another winner), Best Paper Award for 1993 from the Tappi Journal, and Best Paper of the 1992 TAPPI Engineering Conference. He was also named Teacher of the Year at Institute of Paper Science & Technology, 1992. Lindsay's book, Conquering Innovation Fatigue, is co-authored with Cheryl Perkins, CEO and president of Innovationedge, and with Mukund Karanjikar, formerly of Chevron Energy Ventures and currently with Technology Holding LLC, a Salt Lake City firm seeking breakthrough energy solutions. The book is supported by a blog, InnovationFatigue.com. Lindsay was also program chair for PIMA (Paper Industry Management Association) for their 2010 PaperCon conference (Atlanta, May 2–5, 2010). He is also a member of the Honors Committee of the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame. In his role at Asia Pulp and Paper, Lindsay was interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel for their special report, "Paper Cuts: Wisconsin's Paper Industry Battles the Threat of Digital, China as a Paper Power" by journalist John Schmid. In Part Two of the report, "Bankrolled and Bioengineered, China Supplants Wisconsin's Paper Industry," Lindsay was quoted and videotaped in the embedded video, where he discusses innovation and sustainability in the paper industry. National Public Radio's All Things Considered in turn interviewed John Schmid on the "Paper Cuts" story and discussed Lindsay and played an excerpt of Lindsay's comments. Lindsay has written about the Hmong people in the United States. An essay about the reasons for the Hmong presence in the United States has been published by Future Hmong magazine. In 2008, he was quoted by The Christian Science Monitor in an article on the Hmong. Lindsay was named as BYU Chemical Engineering Department's Outstanding Alumnus of the Year in 2004.