Over the last 10 years, this group’s research has led to a coordinated and powerful approach to environmental and materials studies focused on molecular and nanoscale science. The knowledge ENRG has acquired from this research is enabling us to design new technologies and optimize existing technologies to solve some of the most important challenges facing environmental and materials engineering today. Examples of our ongoing research include:

• Optimizing radioactive clean-up technologies through modeling the effect of electron transfer on uranium-organic complexes.
• Using functionalized carbon nanotubes in ultra-sensitive electrochemical sensors.
• Developing new safe and effective technologies for remediation of contaminated structures.
• Characterizing the interaction of toxic metals with biomacromolecules to better understand the nature and fate of mixed waste.
• Studying the chelation of pollutants through state-of-the-art quantum mechanical molecular modeling and density functional theory.
• Using photochemical reactions on iron nanoparticles for environmental remediation.
• Developing in situ electrochemical techniques for use with laboratory and synchrotron-based molecular spectroscopies as a novel approach to research on environment-materials interaction.

Currently, this work is supported through grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy (Environmental Management Science Program). We work with a wide consortium of partners through the joint Stony Brook University-Brookhaven National Laboratory Center for Environmental Molecular Science (CEMS – funded through NSF and DOE), including researchers at Temple University and Pennsylvania State University, as well as people and research facilities at the National Synchrotron Light Source (BNL) and the Army Research Laboratory (Aberdeen, MD).

We are looking forward to developing new collaborations, expanding our industrial partnerships and educational outreach, and playing an important role in the advancement of knowledge at the critical intersection of environmental science and materials engineering.