Contact: Lauren Ward
412-268-7761
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For immediate release:
September 10, 2003
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Terry Collins Bio
Terry Collins, a member of Carnegie Mellon University’s Mellon College of Science faculty since 1987 and the Thomas Lord Professor of Chemistry, is noted in his field for his scientific contributions to green chemistry, his dedication to education and his public advocacy for greater use of green chemistry to achieve a sustainable civilization.
Credited with creating a new class of oxidation catalysts with the potential for enormous, positive impact on the environment, Collins heads the Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry (IGOC), which pursues research, education and development of holistic approaches in green chemistry. IGOC emphasizes replacing polluting technologies with benign processes.
Collins has been recognized worldwide by professional organizations, educational institutions and industry. His honors include the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1999 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award and Japan’s Society of Pure and Applied Coordination Chemistry Award. Collins is an honorary professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, a fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the World Innovation Institute, and a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar.
In January 2003, Science magazine published Collins’ essay “Toward Sustainable Chemistry” as a part of the prestigious Essays on Science and Society series. Only about 80 scientists worldwide have been invited to submit such essays.
He is the associate editor for the Americas of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Green Chemistry, as well as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Chemical and Engineering News. He is also a co-chair of the Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference and the counselor for the Green Chemistry Gordon Conference.
Government officials and policymakers recognize Collins’ dedication to and knowledge of the field of green chemistry as well. He was the United States representative at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Workshop on the Funding of Sustainable Chemistry that took place in Tokyo in 2000 and has served on numerous Green Chemistry research and funding evaluation panels. In 2002, he became a member of the Committee on Environmental Improvement of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
Collins is dedicated to educating others about green chemistry and environmental issues. He has delivered more than 100 lectures at conferences and colloquia worldwide since just 2000. While at Carnegie Mellon in 1992, he launched what is arguably the first course on green chemistry offered at any United States university.
He has been featured on a video and DVD presentations concerning Green Chemistry produced by the ACS and the Environmental Protection Agency and has appeared in “Reactions in Chemistry,” an educational television program for teacher professional development funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Annenberg Foundation. German National Television has also reported on the specifics of TAML activator technology.
The product of IGOC’s work is potentially groundbreaking from both an environmental and a scientific perspective. Collins’ activators can be used to replace chlorine-based oxidants in large global technologies so that some of society’s most toxic industrial residues are not produced. The activators also have broad potential to address previously unsolved environmental and health problems, such as general water purification.
The catalysts developed by the Collins team can be used for wood bleaching in the pulp and paper industry, for removal of textile mill pollutants, for water purification in diverse industries, for the facile destruction of dangerous pollutants including pesticides and biological warfare agents, for removing sulfur from fuels, and for use in products as commonplace as laundry detergent.
The series of metal-containing catalytic peroxide activators, called tetra-amido macrocyclic ligand (Fe-TAML®) activators, allow hydrogen peroxide to be used instead of harmful chlorine. TAML research is the keystone of decades of Collins’ work to develop green, or environmentally friendly, processes for industry.
Collins’ research team presently consists of four senior researchers, one postdoctoral appointee, six graduate students and three undergraduates. The team has been awarded numerous U.S. and foreign patents covering the composition of Fe-TAML catalysts and their methods of use in a wide number of applications. The number of patents continues to grow as work on Fe-TAML activators progresses.
Collins first learned of the damage caused by pollutants from paper and pulp mills and pesticides in his native New Zealand. He began exploring whether there could be an environmentally benign and cost-effective new technology to avoid or to destroy the pollutants.
Oxidation processes that employ hydrogen peroxide instead of chlorine-based compounds can now be used to avoid and eliminate pollutants in a number of global industries, according to Collins, who added that there are application areas still to be discovered.
Collins earned his undergraduate degree in 1974 and his doctoral degree in 1978, both from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. After completing a postdoctorate at Stanford, Collins taught at the California Institute of Technology before coming to Carnegie Mellon in 1987.
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