Green Chemistry Summer School

ACS Summer School on Sustainability and Green Chemistry (2008)

Explore scientific solutions to global challenges at the ACS Green Chemistry Summer School, July 9-17, 2008, at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO. Learn about green chemistry and engineering, renewable resources, and energy sources, and take advantage of this unique opportunity to engage in a number of activities designed to provide a solid foundation in sustainability and green chemistry.

Program Highlights:

• Hear presentations by leading researchers in sustainability and green chemistry
• Collaborate on problem solving projects
• Participate in laboratory experiments
• Present your research during poster sessions
• Engage in discussions on the role of science and technology in solving global sustainability challenges

See last year’s program

How to Apply

Thank you for your interest. We are no longer accepting applications. For general questions about this program, please e-mail gceducation@acs.org.

The summer school is open to graduate students and post-doctoral scholars studying in the Americas. Applicants should be interested in developing collegial relationships that will result in future collaborations.

Transportation, meals, and housing are provided. There are no program fees!

Program Speakers

• Paul T. Anastas
  Paul Anastas joined Yale University in 2007 as Professor in the Practice of Green Chemistry, with appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Chemical Engineering. He serves as the Director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale. From 2004 to 2006, he served as Director of the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. He was previously the Assistant Director for the Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he worked from 1999-2004. Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, Dr. Anastas received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
• Eric J. Beckman
  Eric Beckman is the George M. Bevier Professor of Engineering at the University of Pittsburg and Co-Director of the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative. He received his Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts and held a postdoctoral research appointment at Battelle's Pacific Northwest Laboratory. Before joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in 1989, he held industrial positions at Monsanto Plastics & Resins and in Union Carbide's Silicones and Urethanes Intermediates Division. Dr. Beckman's research encompasses two major areas: the use of carbon dioxide as either a solvent or raw material, and polymer chemistry and processing. Recent work has focused on emulsion and dispersion polymerization on CO2, the copolymerization of CO2 and cyclic ethers to form polycarbonates, and the design of polymers for use in medical applications.
• Joan F. Brennecke
  Joan Brennecke is the Keating-Crawford Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame and Director of the Notre Dame Energy Center. She joined Notre Dame after completing her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her B. S. at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests are primarily in the development of less environmentally harmful solvents. In particular, her research has focused on studies of supercritical fluids, including supercritical CO2 and supercritical water. She was awarded the 2001 Ipatieff Prize from the American Chemical Society in recognition of her pioneering high pressure studies of the local structure of supercritical fluid solutions and the effect of this local structure on the rates of homogeneous reactions. Much of her current research involves ionic liquids. Dr. Brennecke’s primary interests are in the measurement and modeling of thermodynamics, thermophysical properties, phase behavior and separations. She has co-authored more than 100 scientific and technical articles.
• Buzz Cue
  Berkeley (Buzz) W. Cue retired from Pfizer in 2004 after nearly 29 years of service. He now consults with several technology companies serving the pharmaceutical industry to create innovative solutions for pharmaceutical science and manufacturing challenges. While at Pfizer, he was a member of the Worldwide Pharmaceutical Sciences Executive Team, sponsored the global Chemical R&D line council, and was a member of the Groton Laboratories site Leadership Team. He created and led Pfizer’s Green Chemistry initiative and, since retiring, has given more than 60 presentations on green chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry. He received a Bachelor’s with honors from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, his Ph.D. (Organic Chemistry) from the University of Alabama, and completed postdoctoral research at the Ohio State University and as a National Cancer Institute Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Cue is a member of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Governing Board.
• Ken M. Doxsee
  Kenneth Doxsee is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oregon. He received a B.S. and M.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, working with 2005 Nobel Prize winner Robert Grubbs. His research interests involve various aspects of molecular recognition phenomena. Through the design, synthesis, and exploitation of molecules that interact with each other or with metal ions, his research addresses a number of fundamental topics, including the phase- and shape-selective assembly of solid-state materials from molecular precursors and the development of ion-selective binding agents. Dr. Doxsee also works on the development of new green chemistry pedagogical materials, serving as co-author with Jim Hutchison on Green Organic Chemistry: Strategies, Tools, and Laboratory Experiments.
• Mary M. Kirchhoff
  Mary Kirchhoff is Director of the American Chemical Society Education Division. She received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of New Hampshire and joined the Chemistry Department at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., upon completion of her doctorate. Mary spent nine years at Trinity College, where she served as Chair of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. She became involved with green chemistry when she received a AAAS Environmental Fellowship to work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s green chemistry program. Dr. Kirchhoff served for three years as Assistant Director of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute. She is a co-author and co-editor of “Designing Safer Polymers, Greener Approaches to Undergraduate Chemistry Experiments” and “Going Green: Integrating Green Chemistry into the Curriculum”. In 2006, she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• John C. Warner
  John Warner is President and Chief Technology Officer of the Warner-Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Princeton University. He worked at the Polaroid Corporation for nine years, and then went on to start the world's first Green Chemistry Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. He then moved to the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, where he directed a large research group working on a diverse set of projects involving green chemistry using principles of crystal engineering, molecular recognition and self assembly. His work combines aspects of community outreach, government policy and industrial collaboration. In 2004, Dr. Warner received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mentoring from President Bush. He holds over 100 patents and papers in the field and has directly been involved in the development of technologies in several industrial sectors.

2007 Green Chemistry Summer School Program

General Information

The Pan-American Advanced Studies Institute (PASI) program is an initiative supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. PASIs, modeled after the NATO Advanced Studies Institutes, are short courses that involve lecturers of international standing, as well as graduate and postgraduate students from the Americas.

PASIs feature physical and mathematical science disciplines, including engineering, and are often interdisciplinary in nature. They aim to foster cooperation among researchers of the Americas in basic sciences and engineering fields.

About the 2007 Program

The 2007 PASI on Sustainability & Green Chemistry explored scientific solutions to global challenges and addressed such topics as renewable resources, life cycle analysis, energy sources, and sustainable buildings. Participants engaged in a number of activities designed to provide a solid foundation in sustainability and green chemistry, including:

• presentations by leading researchers and educators in sustainability and green chemistry
• collaborative problem solving projects
• student presentations
• laboratory sessions
• discussions on the role of science and technology in solving global sustainability challenges

Held at the Universidad Iberomericana in Mexico, the program was open to graduate and post-doctoral students studying in the Americas. Participants were interested in developing collegial relationships through the PASI for future collaborations on research projects, conferences, and workshops.

The program was hosted by Professor Jorge Ibáñez, Director of the Mexican Microscale Chemistry Center in the Department of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at the Jesuit Universidad Iberoamericana.

Sponsors of the 2007 program were the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, ExxonMobil Foundation and Sigma-Aldrich.

Topics Covered

• Sustainability and Science
• Introduction to Green Chemistry
• Introduction to Green Engineering
• Applications of Green Chemistry and Engineering
• Toxicity and Ecotoxicity
• Environmental Fate and Transport
• Chemicals from Biomass
• Environmental Costs of Agriculture
• Is There Enough Land for Food and Chemicals?
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Fuels: Fossil, Solar, Wind, Biomass, Nuclear, and Geothermal
• Energy Efficiency: Catalysts, Engineering, and More
• Mitigating Air Pollution
• Carbon Sequestration
• Life Cycle Analysis: Tools and Applications
• Education: Sustainability, Green Chemistry, and Green Engineering
• Water Resources: Treatment Systems, Agricultural Runoff, Industrial Wastewater, Sustainable Water Supplies
• Environmental Pressures of Megacities
• Applying Green Chemistry to the Built Environment: Architecture, Construction Materials, Heating and Cooling Systems