Features

Terry Collins has won the 2018 Environmental Award of the Carnegie Science Center. The IGS also celebrates that the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences (PGSS) Campaign has won the Carnegie Science Center's 2018 Leadership in STEM Education Award.

The IGS teamed up with the Phipps Conservatory to co-organize the spectacularly successful 2018 One Health, One Planet Symposium held on March 7-8, 2018.

Twelve days after its 08/02/17 publication in the journal Green Chemistry, the paper on TAML/peroxide treatment of BPA-contaminated lab water highlighted in the next feature down had achieved an Altimetric Attention score of 103, placing it by this metric in the top 1%  of over 8 million research outputs—access news articles (12 at the time of writing this) from this Altimetric site.

A large, multidisciplinary team of researchers led from the IGS has identified and characterized promising potential TAML-based solutions for reducing endocrine disrupting BPA contamination of various wastewater streams. The work includes a definitive review, with Dr. Matthew DeNardo as its lead writer, of human and ecospherical BPA contamination. Based on the scientific content of the paper, Dr. Collins believes that BPA contaminates all the environmental media that are important to life exerting estrogenic pressure calling for stewardship methods that do not introduce toxicity. The reported TAML-based stewardship method was held from publication for much of the 15 years of its development while the IGS collaborated with a large team of environmental health scientists to produce the Tiered Protocol for Endocrine Disruption (TiPED), an assay system for detecting endocrine disruption. Application of TiPED assays to the TAML/peroxide treated BPA solutions shows that the potential solutions eliminate the low dose adverse effects of BPA without introducing new toxicities.

A great leader in public health, a scholar and an impeccable gentleman, Pittsburgher Dr. Herbert Needleman, has passed away.  Dr. Needleman was a leading hero of the 20th century struggle to deal effectively with childhood lead poisoning. He was an inspiration to the environmental intelligentsia of Pittsburgh, a friend to us all. Carnegie Mellon students who take the class "Chemistry and Sustainability", learn about his leadership and impacts—for several years, Herb graced our educational program by lecturing in this class. 

Professor Collins and Dr. Ryabov review the Targeting of High-Valent Iron-TAML Activators at Hydrocarbons and Beyond in Chemical Reviews.

Listen to Dr. Collins being interviewed by Dr. Patty DeMarco and Charles Schowalter at The Union Edge, the national radio station of American Labor, on water treatment with TAML and NewTAML activators.

Graduate Student, Genoa Warner, wins the Carnegie Science Center University/Post-Secondary Student Award: "Carnegie Mellon University doctoral student Genoa Warner is making great strides in promoting environmental sustainability. Ms. Warner published research on green chemistry and environmental remediation. She is an advocate for Community Supported Agriculture and teaching kids how to minimize human impacts on the environment." Genoa discuses here research on NPR.

The Associate Editors of JACS have selected  “Unifying Evaluation of the Technical Performances of Iron-Tetra-amido Macrocyclic Ligand Oxidation Catalysts”  with eleven others from among the body of 2016 JACS articles for the special attention of readers.

An international team of co-editors, including Dr. Collins, of  a Special Edition of the Journal of Cleaner Production entitled Systematic Leadership Toward Sustainability co-author the overview editorial entitled "Systematic leadership towards sustainability".

Endocrine Disrupting Compounds pose substantial risks to the aquatic environment that chemists need to better understand and ameliorate. In the Journal of Visualized Experiments,  experimental details are systematically presented of collaborative work between the IGS and Brunel University's Institute of the Environment Health and Societies showing how combined chemical analysis and in vivo and in vitro bioassays can be used for assessing the efficacy and suitability of wastewater treatment processes with respect to estrogenic endocrine disrupting compounds.

High valent iron-oxo complexes, key reactive intermediates in TAML catalytic cycles can be produced at any pH owing to the remarkable hydrolytic stability of a fully-aliphatic TAML activator—this includes producing pure aqueous solutions of an iron(V)-oxo species under neutral to acidic pH conditions (JACS full paper).

Recently graduated PhD, Dr. Matthew Mills (holder of multiple Fellowships while with us) and team uncover a significant unexpected stability to acid in a TAML activator containing no aromatic groups indicating a source of important design insight for iterative improvement of TAML catalysts (Inorg. Chem. full paper).

Drs. Liang Tang and Matthew DeNardo lead researcher team showing that oxidant choice is a significant process design tool in optimizing TAML processes for destroying exceptionally recalcitrant micropollutants in Homogeneous Catalysis Under Ultra-Dilute Conditions: TAML/NaClO Oxidation of Persistent Metaldehyde (JACS full paper).A universally applicable map is described that allows the operator in TAML water purification processes to determine how much TAML is required to remove a prescribed amount of any targeted substrate based on the rate constants of attack at the substrate and the rate of TAML decomposition of the deployed catalysts.

Graduate student Matthew Allan DeNardo is the lead author on an expansive study of the technical performance parameters in peroxide activation by fifteen different TAML activators at the key water treatment pH of 7. These parameters are the rate constant for catalyst activation (k_I), the rate constant for oxidation of a standard substrate (k_II) and the rate constant for catalyst inactivation (k_i). In the study, linear free energy relationships are identified that link all three parameters to a common electronic origin to provide a unified evaluation that is of core value in the iterative design advancement of homogeneous oxidation catalysts (JACS Communication).

Prof. Collins reviews his 23-year experience in developing a class now called Chemistry and Sustainability in the important sustainability journal, the Journal of Cleaner Production. This contribution is part of a Special Issue to JCLP entitled "Systematic leadership toward sustainability".

Carnegie Mellon IGS and Brunel University IfE (Institute for the Environment) scientists describe the efficacy of TAML/peroxide for removing the active estrogen in the reproductive pill, ethinylestradiol, from various waters including municipal waste water and present evidence that fish feminization is greatly reduced by the process. Removal of ecotoxicity of 17α-ethinylestradiol using TAML/peroxide water treatment (Scientific Reports full paper). This article has been featured on media sites: 1, 2, 3.

Professor Terry Collins on Green Chemistry (Radio New Zealand, July 8, 2014) Green Chemistry (Radio New Zealand, July 17, 2014) 

Sayam Sen Gupta's Mumbai NCL team, Mike Hendrich's CMU chemistry group and the IGS collaborate on the identification and reactivity of a room temperature stable iron(V)-oxo complex: Formation of a Room Temperature Stable FeV(O) Complex: Reactivity Toward Unactivated C-H Bonds (JACS communication)

IGS researchers and collaborators at Oregon State University show how to use zebrafish embryo developmental assays to search for developmental disruption and to identify safer TAML activators for use in water treatment: Zebrafish Assays as Developmental Toxicity Indicators in the Green Design of TAML Oxidation Catalysts, Lisa Truong, Matthew A. DeNardo, Soumen Kundu, Terrence J. Collins, and Robert L. Tanguay, Green Chem., 2013, 15, 2339–2343 DOI:10.1039/C3GC40376A