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By Cecilia Smith, Administrative Assistant, and Edmond Lam, Assistant Director, ACS Green Chemistry Institute
In light of the new ACS Strategic Plan for 2025 – 2029, which includes “foster accessible science education and continuous learning” as a strategic goal and emphasizes sustainability as one of four strategic values, we’re highlighting the impacts of the ACS Campaign for a Sustainable Future Grants program in a new article series. In this series, we’ll feature the 2023 Early Career Postdoctoral-Faculty Bridge Grant awardees and the 2023 Principal Investigator Development in Sustainability Grant awardees to explore the progress they’ve made in their research projects thus far as well as the impact of the grant on their teaching careers.
The ACS Campaign for a Sustainable was launched in 2022 with the goal of advancing chemistry innovations to address the challenges articulated in the U.N. 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The campaign awards two kinds of grants each year to support its strategic goals of increasing the amount and pace of chemistry-related sustainability innovation research and creating a future chemistry enterprise workforce trained in sustainability concepts to revolutionize the discipline. We’re excited to begin to see the impact of these grants for the first cohort of awardees. In the first article in this series, we’re featuring one 2023 Early Career Postdoctoral-Faculty Bridge Grant awardee, Katherine Shulenberger, and one 2023 Principal Investigator Development in Sustainability Grant awardee, Yang Yang, to explore the progress they’ve made in their research projects thus far as well as the impact of the grant on their teaching careers.
The Early Career Postdoctoral-Faculty Bridge Grant provides a post-doctoral fellow or new faculty member with funds to support a post-doctoral associate for two years once their new research group is launched. Katherine Shulenberger was a 2023 recipient of this grant for her project, Heavy Metal-Free Nanocrystals for Clean Energy Generation, and began a faculty position at Brandeis University in Fall 2023.
Since using the grant funds to launch her research lab, Shulenberger has made significant progress in her work to develop sustainable non-toxic transition metals as the base for nanocrystal material. Notably, she has demonstrated two key nexuses of control towards the development of iron sulfide photovoltaic materials: bandgap engineering through quantum confinement and defect passivation via surface passivation using a combination of amine and halide ligands. The development of these materials shows promise for new solar technologies which can enhance capture and usage of solar energy. Furthermore, use of sustainable non-toxic transition metals as the base for the nanocrystal material also shows promise in reducing the potential for leaching of heavy metals into the soil and groundwater.
When it comes to her teaching career, Shulenberger has already made impactful changes on the chemistry curriculum at Brandeis. In an honors general chemistry course, Shulenberger trialed a project in which students were assigned a journal article detailing the impacts of strip mining on water acidity in a local area. After receiving positive feedback on the non-exam format of the assignment and the opportunity for students to connect course concepts to real chemical challenges, Shulenberger developed the assignment into a full semester project involving green chemistry topics, which will be implemented in Shulenberger’s next iteration of the course.
In addition to this impactful change to an introductory chemistry course, Shulenberger has also developed a new advanced elective, Advanced Energy and Materials, which will be taught for the first time in fall 2025 and will introduce students to core concepts in how chemical systems can store and transport charge and energy. The course will synergistically discuss the impacts of carbon emissions, the need for renewable energy sources, and the current global market in renewable technologies. When asked about the impact of the grant on her work at Brandeis thus far, Shulenberger said, “this funding has been invaluable in my early development as a faculty member.”
The Principal Investigator Development in Sustainability Grant provides funding to early or mid-career investigators to spend 6-12 months in the laboratory of a private company, a national laboratory, or an academic laboratory in a different institution, with the goal of establishing robust collaborations across industry—academia or across disciplines. Yang Yang, professor at University of California Santa Barabra, was a 2023 recipient of this grant for his project, Sustainable Photobiocatalytic Synthesis of Non-Canonical Amino Acids Under Continuous Flow Conditions. With the grant, Yang worked in collaboration with the Process Chemistry Group at Genentech, Inc. to develop new biocatalytic methods for non-canonical amino acid synthesis with potential applications to the pharmaceutical industry.
Due to its mild operating conditions, use of water as a reaction medium, and reliance on biorenewable resources, biocatalysis has emerged as a promising alternative for manufacturing a variety of chemicals, including pharmaceuticals. The non-canonical amino acids that Yang’s project focused on synthesizing are often incorporated into a number of bioactive small-molecule agents. The team’s biocatalytic approach, which was powered by solar energy, allowed for the stereoselective preparation of polysubstituted unnatural prolines, which are valuable analogs of proline, the only cyclic proteinogenic amino acid with crucial roles in ubiquitous structural collagen, medicinal agents and catalytic asymmetric synthesis. This work will promote the development of small-molecule and macromolecular therapeutics, which can give access to new chemical architectures for pharmaceuticals and ultimately contribute to U.N. Sustainable Development Goal #3, Good Health and Well-Being.
As a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSB, Yang has created and implemented new course material relating to sustainable chemistry, with positive results from his students. In the 2024—2025 academic year, Yang developed a course titled Green Chemistry and Sustainable Synthesis, which had an emphasis on the application of biocatalysis and emerging biotechnologies in sustainable manufacturing and was designed to provide students with both a conceptual framework and practical understanding of how chemistry can contribute to a more sustainable and environmentally responsible future. The course included guest speakers from industry and attracted graduate and upper-level undergraduate students from chemistry, chemical engineering, and biological engineering programs, allowing for diverse discussions and a collaborative learning environment.
“Feedback from students was overwhelmingly positive. Many appreciated the forward-looking nature of the material, the relevance to global sustainability challenges, and the opportunity to explore cutting-edge scientific tools. Several students expressed an interest in pursuing research or careers in green chemistry or industrial biotechnology as a result of their experience in the course,” says Yang.
To learn more about the Sustainable Future Campaign’s Grants and other funding opportunities, visit the Green Chemistry Funding & Awards page.