In 1982 Peter Bocko, Ph.D. '80, was given a choice at Corning Inc.: Develop a new glass for bifocals or work on liquid crystal displays (LCDs). "I think that was like an IQ test," he says with a laugh.

Corning now has more than half of the world market in LCD glass, thanks largely to Bocko's efforts.

But not long after Bocko formed his LCD development group, management decided it was spending too much and disbanded his team. "I was a development group manager with not even a technician," he says, so he focused outward, traveling to Asia and building relationships with customers. Those relationships are at the core of what led him to become Corning's chief technology officer for Asia.

"My job has been to create an efficient, friction-free connection between the creativity that's at our labs and the creativity that exists in our customers," he says. "So the scientists know exactly what problem they're trying to solve and how the customer defines success." Along the way he's published more than 50 papers and garnered 10 patents.

Considered one of the world authorities in display glass, Bocko credits his studies at Cornell, where he earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, with having given him the ability "to learn something really in depth and become best in the world in some particular area that matters."

But he says the ability to think on his feet and be able to explain complicated things have been the most powerful skills he brought to Corning, especially given the barriers of language and culture that exist for Amercians doing business in Asia. He credits his Ph.D. adviser, Benjamin Widom, Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus, with teaching him the value of explaining complicated technology simply and clearly. Widom's lectures, he says, were "like listening to a string of pearls being swirled out."

Bocko shows off Corning's display applications lab and some of the projects just now coming to fruition, such as Willow glass, a 150-micron-thick flexible glass that's wound on a spool. It's not yet on the market, but Bocko says the ability to do continuous, roll-to-roll processes, similar to the way newspapers are printed, could someday enable the world to be papered with vibrant, colorful and interactive electronic information.

And Willow's thinness makes it environmentally friendly. "You melt glass by the pound, but you sell it by the square foot," Bocko explains. Customers only really care about the glass surface, so minimizing thickness reduces a display's carbon footprint.

The lab also experiments with 3-D TV screens, which Bocko calls the next battleground for competing TV manufacturers. "It's getting to the point where the most sophisticated data processing going on in your house is actually the TV," says Bocko, who's also been involved with photovoltaic glass and Corning's high-strength Gorilla glass, used for everything from cell phones to flat-panel televisions.

Back in the mid-'90s, Bocko's interest in sustainability led him to set a goal for Corning's R&D team: Figure out how to make LCD glass without any of the arsenic or heavy metals needed to make the glass pure. "No customer told us we had to do this," Bocko says. "We did it because it was the right thing to do." It took 10 years, but EAGLE XG (for "extra green") was introduced in 2006 and is still state of the art, an accomplishment of which Bocko is personally proud.

Managing global projects with labs in different time zones means work goes on 24 hours a day and the e-mails never stop. "I thought the hardest work I'd ever have to do was my Ph.D. and, boy, was I wrong," Bocko says. "I work seven days a week. But that's just the way consumer electronics is. The market is extremely competitive, and the customer expects you to deliver the product very rapidly."

Bocko holds Corning's company record for the most trips to Asia: 150 round trips over the last 20 years. Three years ago he and his wife moved to Tokyo. So now he commutes in the other direction.

"I figure I'm approaching six months of my life spent in a 747 over the Pacific," he says with a laugh.

Linda Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.