Green Chemistry Blog

We are delighted to announce that Luigi Vaccaro (University of Perugia, Italy) has been appointed as a new Associate Editor in Green Chemistry

Luigi is a Full Professor at the University of Perugia, where he leads the Green S.O.C. group, http://greensoc.chm.unipg.it. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), and before joining Green Chemistry, he was an Associate Editor for RSC Advances (2015-2024). His recognitions include the Europa Medal from the Society of Chemical Industry – London (2001), the ADP Award from Merck’s Chemistry Council for “Creative work in organic chemistry” (2006 and 2007), the G. Ciamician Medal of the Società Chimica Italiana (2007), the Lady Davis (2018) Visiting Professorship, the Pino Medal from the Organic and Industrial Divisions of the Italian Chemical Society (2023). His research is aimed at developing different aspects of chemistry to define sustainable and optimized chemical processes, combining the use of safer organic solvents, heterogeneous catalysis, and continuous-flow technology.“I am honoured for this new role as an Associate Editor of Green Chemistry. Catalysis, circularity, waste-minimisation, and innovative technologies are just a few shades of the complex greater picture that green chemistry represents. I am sure that research contributions in these areas that quantitatively prove advances in terms of sustainability have and will always find a home in this journal.” – Luigi Vaccaro
Read some of Luigi’s Open Access papers in Green Chemistry: 

• Microwave assisted batch and continuous flow Suzuki–Miyaura reactions in GVL using a Pd/PiNe biowaste-derived heterogeneous catalyst
  Federica Valentini, Benedetta Di Erasmo, Marta Ciani, Shaomin Chen, Yanlong Gu and  Luigi Vaccaro
  Green Chem., 2024,26, 4871-4879. DOI: 10.1039/D4GC00497C

• A waste-minimized approach for the synthesis of iodinated organic borazines
  Dario Marchionni, Daniele Gernini, Alireza Nazari Khodadadi, Ejdi Cela, Fan Huanga  and  Luigi Vaccaro
  Green Chem., 2024, Advance Article. DOI: 10.1039/D4GC00699B, part our 2024 Green Chemistry Hot Articles themed collection.

• Introducing the Use of a Recyclable Solid Electrolyte for Waste Minimization in Electrosynthesis: Preparation of 2-aryl-benzoxazoles in flow
  Francesco Ferlin, Federica Valentini, Filippo Campana and Luigi Vaccaro
  Green Chem., 2024, Advance Article. DOI: 10.1039/D4GC00930D

Read more of Luigi’s Royal Society of Chemistry publications here

Please join us in welcoming Luigi!

“We are really grateful for Luigi’s hard work and support of RSC Advances during the past 9 years, and wish him all the best in his new role with Green Chemistry” – Laura Fisher, Executive Editor, RSC Advances

We are delighted to announce that Charlotte Williams (University of Oxford, United Kingdom) has been appointed as new Editorial Board Member in Green Chemistry.

Charlotte K. Williams OBE FRS is a professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Associate Head of Department (Research) in Oxford Chemistry. She is also an EPSRC Established Career Research Fellow. She heads-up a research group investigating polymerization catalysis and polymer chemistry with a particular focus on improving polymer sustainability. Her work involves close collaboration with scientists and engineers in both academic and industrial laboratories.

In 2011, Charlotte founded econic technologies which sells catalysts and processes facilitating carbon dioxide utilization (http://econic-technologies.com/). From 2003-2016, Charlotte was an academic in the Chemistry department at Imperial College London, serving as Head of Inorganic Chemistry teaching and Head of Materials Chemistry. Earlier in her career, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge University (2002-2003), working with Andrew Holmes and Richard Friend (Organometallic polymers for electronics), and at the University of Minnesota (2001-2002) working with Bill Tolman and Marc Hillmyer (zinc catalysts for lactide polymerization). She obtained her BSc and PhD from Imperial College London, the latter supervised by Vernon Gibson and Nick Long on ethene polymerization catalysis.

Her work has been recognised by prizes and awards including the Royal Society Leverhulme Medal (2022), the RSC Tilden Medal (2021) an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II for Services to Chemistry (2020), Macro Group UK Medal (2019), The Dechema Otto Roelen Medal (2018), The UK Catalysis Hub Sir John Meurig Thomas Medal (2017), the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday Morgan Medal (2016) and the Women in Science and Engineering Tech-Start Up Award (2015).

Please join us in welcoming Charlotte!

Celebrate the 15^th Anniversary of companion journal Polymer Chemistry in a special collection here

We are delighted to announce that Jean-Paul Lange (University of Twente and Shell Projects & Technology, The Netherlands) has been appointed as new Editorial Board Member in Green Chemistry.

Jean-Paul is the senior Principal Science Expert at Shell Projects & Technology in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he has been exploring novel catalytic processes for producing fuels and chemicals from natural gas and oil and, for more than twenty years also from biomass and plastic wastes. His research embraces heterogeneous catalysis, chemical engineering, conceptual process design, manufacturing economics and technology strategy. Jean-Paul is also a Professor in Chemical Biorefining at the University of Twente, the Netherlands, where he is investigating thermo-chemical and -catalytic routes to convert biomass to fuels and chemicals and to recycle plastic wastes. Before joining Shell, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lehigh University in Bethlehem (Pennsylvania, USA), got his PhD at the Fritz-Haber Institute (Max Planck Society) in Berlin (Germany) and graduated from the University of Namur (Belgium). He has co-authored more than 120 patent series, 80 scientific publications, and 10 book chapters and is co-editor of one scientific book. He also contributes to public science through various advisory boards in the Netherlands, Europe for the CEFIC and the European Commission.

“Green Chemistry is sterile if not applied. It prefers simplicity over sophistication, resilience over sensitivity”. – Jean-Paul Lange

Please join us in welcoming Jean-Paul!

We are delighted to announce that Serenella Sala (European Commission – Joint Research Centre, Italy) has been appointed as a new Board Member in Green Chemistry.

Serenella is the Head of Unit of the Land Resources and Supply Chain Assessments Unit within the Sustainable Resource Directorate at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC). Environmental scientist by background, with a PhD in applied ecology, her research activities support European policies and focus on assessing sustainability by applying methodologies and models for sustainable development, integrated environmental assessment, life cycle assessment, risk assessment. The focus is on the eco-innovation of process and products as well as resource efficiency. She joined the JRC in 2010. Between 2001 and 2010, Serenella was the coordinator of the Research Unit on Sustainable Development (GRISS) at the Department of Environmental Science at University of Milano Bicocca, where she worked as a scientific project leader for several environmental projects supporting sustainability assessment in both the private and public sector. She actively promoted public and private partnership on eco-innovation and resource efficiency and contributed to harmonisation of methods and models for life cycle impact assessment at international level.

“Let’s learn from nature how to develop our production and consumption systems in a sustainable way”. – Serenella Sala

Please join us in welcoming Serenella!

We are delighted to announce that Prof. Keiichi Tomishige (Tohoku University, Japan) has been appointed as a new Associate Editor in Green Chemistry.

Keiichi Tomishige received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Science in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Tokyo. During his Ph.D. course in 1994, he moved to the Graduate School of Engineering in the same university as a research associate. In 1998, he became a lecturer, and then he moved to the Institute of Materials Science at the University of Tsukuba as a lecturer in 2001. Since 2004 he has been an associate professor at the Graduate School of Pure and Applied Sciences in the University of Tsukuba. Since 2010, he is a professor in the School of Engineering at the Tohoku University.

His research interests are the development of heterogeneous catalysts for: 1) production of biomass-derived chemicals, 2) non-reductive CO₂ conversion with alcohols and amines, and 3) hydrogen production by reforming of biomass.

“I am very happy to continue working with the Editorial Team and to play a new role as an Associate Editor of Green Chemistry, and hope connecting to carbon neutrality and carbon recycling”. – Keiichi Tomishige

Read some of Keiichi’s Open Access papers in Green Chemistry:

• Direct synthesis of polycarbonate diols from atmospheric flow CO2 and diols without using dehydrating agents
  Yu Gu, Masazumi Tamura, Yoshinao Nakagawa, Kenji Nakao, Kimihito Suzuki and Keiichi Tomishige
  Green Chem., 2021, 23, 5786–5796. DOI: 10.1039/d1gc01172c
  .
• Direct dimethyl carbonate synthesis from CO2 and methanol catalyzed by CeO2 and assisted by 2-cyanopyridine: a cradle-to-gate greenhouse gas emission study
  Hajime Ohno, Mahdi Ikhlayel, Masazumi Tamura, Kenji Nakao, Kimihito Suzuki, Kentaro Morita, Yuzuru Kato, Keiichi Tomishige and Yasuhiro Fukushima
  Green Chem., 2021, 23, 457–469. DOI: 10.1039/d0gc03349a

And have a look at his latest Critical Review in Green Chemistry:

• Hydrodeoxygenation of potential platform chemicals derived from biomass to fuels and chemicals
  Keiichi Tomishige, Mizuho Yabushita, Ji Cao and Yoshinao Nakagawa
  Green Chem., 2022, 24, 5652–5690. DOI: 10.1039/d2gc01289h

Read more of Keiichi’s Royal Society of Chemistry publications here.

Pease join us in welcoming Keiichi in his new role in Green Chemistry.

The green chemistry community is mourning the loss of István T. Horváth, founder of the field ‘fluorous biphase catalysis’ and early pioneer in the field of renewable resources and green chemistry.

Professor István T. Horváth was born in Budapest, Hungary, on August 6, 1953. He studied chemistry at the Petrik Lajos Chemical Technical School in Budapest and at Veszprém University of Chemical Engineering, Veszprém, Hungary (now University of Pannonia), where he received his M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering (1977) and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry (1979). Subsequently, he was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Veterinary University, Budapest (1979–1981) and a Research Engineer at Chinoin Ltd. in Budapest (1981).

Horváth then switched continents for the first of five times in his career. This brought him to Yale University, where he joined the group of Prof. Richard D. Adams as a Postdoctoral Research Associate (1982–1984). During this productive period, he worked on the preparation and characterization of osmium clusters. Adams and Horváth co-authored a remarkable 20 papers in 32 months. Horváth returned to Europe in 1984 to spend three years at the ETH Zürich with Professors Piero Pino and György Bor.

This was followed by another transatlantic move as he assumed a position at the Corporate Research Laboratories of Exxon (now ExxonMobil) in Annandale, New Jersey. This immensely productive phase of his career lasted more than ten years (1987–1998) and brought him international visibility. As an independent investigator Horváth became internationally recognized for using in situ spectroscopic techniques (especially NMR and IR) to elucidate mechanistic questions of important chemical transformations and uncover key reaction intermediates. A significant achievement was the spectroscopic observation of the formyl cation in the condensed phase, published in 1997 in Science. Beside important discoveries in reaction monitoring, Horváth was among the first to advocate the use of in situ spectroscopy to attain molecular level understanding chemical of reactions, especially focusing on the development of greener processes.

Furthermore, his Science paper published in 1994, established the basic principles of fluorous biphase chemistry, which lead to the development of more efficient multiphase catalytic processes and novel catalyst immobilization approaches in the following decades.

In 1999, he returned to Hungary, was appointed professor in 2001, and continued his research in the field of green chemistry and in situ spectroscopy at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest until 2008. During this time he devoted attention to the catalytic conversion of renewable resources, which led to the development of the idea of a gamma-valerolactone economy.

Between 2009 and 2020 he was a Chair-Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biology, City University of Hong Kong where he also acted as department head for 6 years. Here he first introduced the Ethanol Equivalent and Sustainability Index for the measurement and evaluation of sustainability.

He returned to Hungary in 2020 and continued his work at the Department of Chemical and Environmental Process Engineering, Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

His contribution was acknowledged by more than 25 international prizes and awards, including the Humboldt Research Award (2006), and the Exxon Golden Tiger Award (1991). He was member of the European Academy of Science (2020), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Washington DC, USA, 2016), Fellow of the American Chemical Society (2014), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2013), Honorary Member of the National Academy of Sciences Literature and Arts of Modena, Italy (2010). He became an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Scienes in 2019.

István is well-remembered for his organization of highly successful scientific events with a unique style. In fact, he organized and managed more than 45 international scientific meetings including Gordon Conferences and regular meetings of the homogeneous catalysis community, such as ISHC.

He was  an intelligent and knowledgeable supervisor and highly supportive mentor who always encouraged his students and colleagues to leave their comfort zones and aim for fundamental scientific discoveries. He could be tough at times but was always fair, and argued by the facts when it came to science. He graduated numerous PhD students and post-docs, the vast majority of whom are still pursuing research in green chemistry or closely related areas. A good overview of his scientific career can be found in the special issue of ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acssuschemeng.8b03138) published in 2016 on the ocassion of his 65th birthday.

To us, first and foremost István was a mentor who had a profound influence on our scientific training, shaped our way of thinking and guided our carrer as green chemist.

István was a one-of-a-kind ’molecular designer’ – a brilliant scientist, who would always follow a unique and pioneering path. A special personality: warm, funny, bold and unrelenting – he continuously questioned the status quo and spoke his mind… and was willing to stand up for what he believed to be the truth, for the benefit of the whole comunity. He will be tremendously missed.

Prof. Laszlo T. Mika, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Prof. Katalin Barta, University of Graz