FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | January 02, 2014

U Delaware, Carnegie Mellon, North Carolina State and North Dakota State students win prestigious Green Chemistry Travel Award

WASHINGTON, January 2, 2014— Four U.S. students have been chosen to receive a 2013 Ciba Travel Award in Green Chemistry. These students show significant ability to incorporate creative green chemistry solutions into their research that reduce waste, conserve energy and seek alternatives to toxic and nonrenewable substances.

Administered by the American Chemical Society’s (ACS’) Green Chemistry Institute, this competitive award enables students with a research interest in green chemistry to travel to an ACS scientific conference with a significant green chemistry component. The students will have opportunities to expand their education by attending symposia, networking and presenting their research. This year’s awardees come from a breadth of research areas: sustainable polymers, green chemicals, fiber and polymer science and organometallic chemistry.

The winners:

Angela Holmberg, from Circle Pines, Minn., is a doctoral student with a concentration area of Chemical Engineering (Sustainable Polymers) at the University of Delaware and will be attending the 248th ACS National Meeting, August 10-14, 2014, in San Francisco. She will be presenting research on bio-based alternatives to petroleum-based polymers.

Matthew DeNardo, from Moon Township, Pa., is a doctoral student with a concentration area of Green Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University and will be attending the 248th ACS National Meeting, August 10-14, 2014, in San Francisco. He will be presenting new research on the performance and lifetime of iron TAML activators — new greener chemicals developed at Carnegie Mellon that offer an alternative to chlorine-based technologies.

Avinav Nandgaonkar, from Nagpur, Maharashtra, India, is a doctoral student with a concentration area of Fiber and Polymer Science at North Carolina State University and will be attending the 247th ACS National Meeting, March 16-20, 2014, in Dallas. His research area is the green bio-synthesis of carbon-based materials and greener dye degradation.

Jing Zhang, from Liaocheng, Shandong Province, China, is a doctoral student with a concentration area of Organometallic Chemistry at North Dakota State University and will be attending the 247th ACS National Meeting, March 16-20, 2014, in Dallas. She will present research on greener methodologies for chemical synthesis using ruthenium-based catalysis.

The Ciba Travel Award in Green Chemistry was established in 2009 and is awarded annually. The award covers up to $2,000 of each awardee’s travel and conference expenses.

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The ACS Green Chemistry Institute® is an impartial, scientific convener promoting the implementation of green chemistry and engineering across the global chemical enterprise. The Institute empowers people to reimagine chemistry and engineering for a sustainable future by offering educational resources, training and development opportunities for students, educators and researchers, and by convening industrial roundtables to promote industry collaboration around green chemistry issues. A part of the American Chemical Society, a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress, the Institute holds an annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, the longest running conference on green chemistry in the country.

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The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Media Contact

Christiana Briddell
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Angela Holmberg
Matthew DeNardo
Avinav Nandgaonkar
Jing Zhang