Environment Prize: Professor Arthur Ragauskas
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Please join us in congratulating Professor Arthur Ragauskas as the recipient of the 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry’s Environment Prize. The prize was awarded for pioneering several widely used tools and approaches in biorefining, including the mechanistic understanding of lignin conversion chemistry.
Professor Ragauskas’s research focuses on developing new and improved applications for naturally-derived renewable biopolymers for biofuels, biopower, and bio-based materials and chemicals. By understanding the structure of biomass from wood and agricultural products. He hopes to develop sustainable chemical solutions to replace petroleum derived resources.
Professor Ragauskas held the first Fulbright Chair in Alternative Energy and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Academy of Wood Science and the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI). In 2014, he assumed the governor’s chair for biorefining based at the University of Tennessee’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, with a complementary appointment at the university’s Institute of Agriculture’s Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries. He also serves in the Energy and Environmental Sciences Directorate, Biosciences Division, at ORNL.
Currently, Professor Ragauskas manages a research group of graduate students, postdoctoral research fellows, a research scientist, and visiting scientists. He is the recipient of the 2014 TAPPI Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal Award, the 2014 ACS Affordable Green Chemistry Award, 2017 AIChE Green Processing Award, 2017 Academia Distinguished Service Award, 2019 AIChE Chase Award, and his students and postdocs have won several awards, including the ACS graduate research award, ORNL UT-Battelle Award, and the ORNL Supplementary Performance Award. His research has been summarised in 828 peer-reviewed publications.
"There can be no higher honour than the acknowledgement that your work is contributing to a better environment!"- Professor Arthur Ragauskas
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