Sustainability Awards for Educators

Dr. Qi (Tony) Dong earned his PhD in Chemistry from Boston College, where he focused on green energy technologies such as metal-air batteries and electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction. He then completed postdoctoral training at the University of Maryland and served as a visiting scholar at Princeton University, exploring green chemical manufacturing using electrothermal approaches. During this time, Qi co-founded Polymer-X Inc., a startup dedicated to electrified chemical synthesis and plastic upcycling. Currently, Qi is an Assistant Professor in the James Tarpo Jr. and Margaret Tarpo Department of Chemistry at Purdue University. His research centers on developing novel chemical processes and materials to address pressing challenges in energy, environmental sustainability, and critical resource management. To date, Qi has published 27 first- or co-first-author papers in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Science, Nature Chemical Engineering, Nature Nanotechnology, Joule, Chem, and JACS. Qi is deeply passionate about sustainability and green chemistry education. Since joining Purdue, he has developed and offered a graduate-level course titled “Sustainability, Energy, and the Environment.” This interdisciplinary course is designed for graduate students from diverse STEM backgrounds and explores topics such as decarbonization, carbon capture, utilization and sequestration, plastic recycling, microplastics, PFAS, and life-cycle assessment. The course leverages Qi’s extensive expertise and addresses the evolving energy landscape and growing environmental challenges. In addition, Qi is also developing an undergraduate-level course that discusses the intersection of chemistry and sustainability, further emphasizing his commitment to advancing green chemistry education.

Dr. Iris Yu specializes in microwave thermoprocessing and green catalysis. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in 2018. She was a Humboldt Fellow at the Technical University of Munich, Germany and Postdoctoral Researcher at Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, University of York, UK. She actively contributes to the scientific community serving as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She was awarded the MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 (TR35) Asia Pacific 2023 and L'Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Singapore 2024.

Iris’s team strives to valorize bioresources for the synthesis of carbon-neutral products with potential market value. Her team adopts microwaves as the core of the upcycling technology, which enables energy-efficient heating, with the scientific focus on unravelling the synergies between microwaves, renewable feedstocks, and catalysts. The research outcomes will facilitate science-driven design of microwave-assisted catalytic systems for bioresource utilization. By developing thermocatalytic approaches to diversify the technology market, her research paves the way to turning homogeneous organic waste into high-value products (food additives, cosmetic ingredients), closing the bioresource loop and creating local circular economies.

Dr. David Vosburg is the Donald A. Strauss Professor of Chemistry at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, a proud signer of the Green Chemistry Commitment. His research group pursues biomimetic organic synthesis, sustainable chemistry, and green chemistry education. He was educated at Williams College, Scripps Research Institute, and Harvard Medical School. David is a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, a Newbigin Interfaith Fellow, an Inklings Project Fellow, and a recipient of the American Chemical Society’s Committee on Environmental Improvement (ACS-CEI) Award for Incorporating Sustainability into Chemistry Education. He and his family of five share J.R.R. Tolkien's love for forests and eucatastrophe and have enjoyed green-chemistry-related sabbaticals at the University of Cambridge (UK) and the University of Guanajuato (Mexico), the latter supported by a Fulbright-García Robles award.