Green Chemistry, Toxicology, and Policy (GCTP) for a Sustainable Future

A Proposed NSF Integrative Graduate Education, Research and Training (IGERT) Program

The BCGC faculty team, led by Prof. Chris Vulpe of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology, have been invited by NSF to submit a full proposal for NSF support of this graduate training program under the IGERT Directorate.

The principles of green chemistry – and the policies that enable their adoption  – link the science of chemistry with public and environmental health protection.  By addressing the molecular origins of product waste, contamination, and harmful eco/human exposures, green chemistry offers promise toward more long-term solutions.  The faculty of UC Berkeley asserts that creating a new generation of scholars in green chemistry is essential to building an environmentally sustainable future and anticipates a growing need for solid, well-trained graduates with broad exposure to the diverse disciplines that link green chemistry. 

The vision for the proposed interdisciplinary GCTP training program is of bringing together a broad array of UC Berkeley graduate programs – chemistry, toxicology, engineering, public health, public policy, business administration, and law – to build a new generation of forward-looking academics and professionals who can effectively engage their careers at the intersection of these fields and enable the implementation of a prosperous society built on a new, benign materials basis. 
The program will develop a cohesive graduate group of peers from diverse disciplines with a common unifying focus of green chemistry.  This program, through the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry, will link investigators and students in chemistry, engineering, toxicology, and exposure assessment with those in public policy, business administration, economics, and law.  This multidisciplinary approach is essential to accurately framing questions that are inherent to the challenge of green chemistry in the context of sustainability.

There are three major research goals in the GCTP graduate training program:

1. Sustainable Chemical Processes – The development of benign and sustainable alternative chemicals and synthesis processes to meet societal needs and reduce the utilization of high-volume, high-exposure and high-risk chemicals, processes and products.
2. Anticipatory Toxicology – The development of precision chemical testing methods based on advances in ecotoxicogenomics that can anticipate hazards and detect subtle alterations to human and ecosystem health. 
3. Engagement and Implementation – The development of interdisplinary, science-based policy solutions that can accurately shift market signals in ways that motivate industrial investment in green chemistry and channel consumer sovereignty towards products that can form a new green materials basis for our economy.