Green Future: ACS's Jackson (far left) and Jacobs (far right) congratulate Hancock award winners Jadhav (left) and Cong (right).
The ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry presented the Kenneth G Hancock Memorial Student Awards 2011 in Green Chemistry. It was also sponsored by the National Institute of Standards & Technology.
WASHINGTON DC, US: The 2011 Kenneth G. Hancock Memorial Student Awards in Green Chemistry, sponsored by the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry and the National Institute of Standards & Technology, were presented at a ceremony on June 20th in Washington DC. This year’s recipients are Swapnil R Jadhav, a graduate student in associate chemistry professor George John’s group at the City College of New York and Huan Cong, a graduate student in chemistry professor John A Porco Jr’s group at Boston University.
Each award includes $1,000 and a certificate. The awards are named in honour of Hancock, an early leader in the field of green chemistry who died unexpectedly in 1993 during his tenure as Director of the National Science Foundation’s Chemistry Division. Madeleine Jacobs, Executive Director and CEO, ACS presented the awards to Jadhav and Cong.
Jadhav was lauded for his discovery that sugars such as mannitol, sorbitol and xylitol, when enzymatically coupled to fatty acid chains, form molecules that can serve as amphiphiles to make molecular gels, a kind of functional soft material with a diverse range of applications (C&EN, July 26, 2010, page 8). Jadhav’s research demonstrates that these nontoxic, biobased molecular gels are efficient for oil-spill recovery, controlled-release biopesticides and more, said Jacobs.
Cong was singled out for his research using silica-supported silver nanoparticles as a green catalyst. Not only is this catalyst easy to use and manufacture, it has high activity and a relatively low level of toxicity, all while being inexpensive. Cong discovered that the catalyst can be used in efficient Diels-Alder cycloadditions to synthesize the core structure shared by more than 50 biologically active natural products, many of which show promising anticancer, anti-HIV, and anti-inflammatory activity (C&EN, May 17, 2010, page 29).
(C) ACS News