UMass Boston's "Green" Chemist Named
"Distinguished Chemist of the Year"

(Boston, MA)- UMass Boston Professor John Warner has been nominated and elected '"Distinguished Chemist of the Year" by the New England Institute of Chemists, the local branch of the American Institute of Chemists. The award will be presented at an awards ceremony on the evening of April 25th.

Warner is perhaps best known for advancing the study and practice of Green Chemistry, both worldwide and at UMass Boston. This relatively new field offers industry environmentally-sound methods of production-and a competitive advantage.

UMass Boston is working to give Massachusetts businesses this edge, and its students access to the discipline with both a PhD program and an undergraduate honors course in green chemistry. The campus is also home to the new Green Chemistry Laboratory for Research and Education in Sustainable Innovation, and in collaboration with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, UMass Boston recently hosted the Commonwealth's first-ever "Green Chemistry Symposium." The driving force behind all this activity is John Warner, professor of chemistry and director of biochemistry at UMass Boston.

"Most of our work involves understanding how molecules organize and react in natural systems," Warner says. "We believe that if one wants to build a material that is environmentally benign and safe, drawing inspiration from nature is a good starting point, because they have already evolved within a sustainable ecosystem."

Warner and his team are currently working on developing solar energy devices, drug delivery systems, immunosuppression pharmaceuticals, anticancer compounds, antibiotics, microelectronics, holography and renewable plastics. In 2001, they filed patent applications for sustainable technologies in semiconductor film processing and biorenewable plastics.

A founding stakeholder of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award Program, Warner is also co-author of Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, and serves on the Governor's Science Advisory Board for Toxics Use Reduction. A frequent presenter at Green Chemistry conferences worldwide, Warner is the External Advisor of the Australian Green Chemistry Centre, and is the educational activities chair of CHEMRAWN XIV [Chemical Research Applied to World Needs] serves on the Governor's Science Advisory Board for Toxics Use Reduction. Warner is also a UMass Boston alumnus.

Warner maintains close relationships with area companies and state agencies, including the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, the Toxics Use Reduction Institute, The American Chemical Society, The US Environmental Protection Agency, the Massachusetts STEP program and the UMass Boston Environmental Business and Technology Center.

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4/17/02

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