Judy Runge’s metallurgical engineer and surface finishing expert career spans almost 40 years in industrial, government, and academic professional settings.

She worked at Northrop’s Defense Systems Division, Taussig Associates, Inc., Saporito Plating, Argonne National Laboratory, and recently retired as a Principal Engineer for Surface Finishing at Apple. Dr. Runge still maintains her consulting company, CompCote International, where she works with OEMs and finishing operations on various processes, product development and failure analysis.

In 2018, she authored The Metallurgy of Anodizing Aluminum, published by Springer Nature, one of the foremost publications on all facets of the anodizing process.

We  spoke with Dr. Runge about her career, her work at Northrop and Apple, and her ongoing anodizing consulting work.