Covestro Lecture: Developing Alternatives to Oil
Join us for a public lecture on renewable resources
The Center for Sustainable Polymers is proud to host:
"Developing Alternatives to Oil as Feedstocks for our Chemicals and Liquid Fuels"
Presented by Professor Karen Goldberg University of Pennsylvania
6:30 p.m. – Doors open and refreshments
7 p.m. – Free Public Lecture
REGISTER HERE!
Registration is requested. Seating is first-come, first-served the day of the event.
About the lecture
The call for reducing CO2 emissions and moving to renewable energy sources has never been louder than it is today. But as society moves away from oil as a primary energy source, we need to develop other sustainable sources for our liquid fuels. Furthermore, we must also re-envision our chemical industry and economy.
Gasoline and other liquid fuels are the major products that are made from oil, but oil is also the source of the chemicals that are used to make most all of the consumer goods that we have come to rely on. Our medicines, detergents, paints, plastics, fibers, fabrics, and almost everything we use on a daily basis, are currently derived from petroleum. The carbon-based building blocks used to make all these consumer goods have been available in sufficient supply and at low cost due to the economy of scale of the enormous oil refining industry. Fundamentally new pathways, from new sources, to the chemicals and liquid fuels that we depend on must be developed to successfully transition to a sustainable future.
In this presentation, Goldberg will describe the history of how we got to our current energy landscape, projections on where we are going, and also include some of the exciting strategies that scientists are pursuing to allow us to use natural gas and carbon dioxide to prepare our chemicals and fuels in the future.
About the speaker
Karen Goldberg received her A.B. degree from Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City. As an undergraduate, she pursued research projects with Professor Roald Hoffmann at Cornell University, Professor Stephen Lippard at Columbia University, and Dr. Tom Graedel and Dr. Steven Bertz at AT&T Laboratories. She then went on to the University of California at Berkeley where she earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry working with Professor Robert Bergman.
Following a postdoctoral year with Professor Bruce Bursten at The Ohio State University, Goldberg joined the faculty at Illinois State University, a primarily undergraduate institution in Normal, IL. In 1995, she moved to the University of Washington (UW) as Assistant Professor of Chemistry. She was awarded tenure at UW and rose through the ranks to full Professor. In 2007 she became the first Raymon E. and Rosellen M. Lawton Distinguished Scholar in Chemistry, and in 2010 she became the first Nicole A. Boand Endowed Professor of Chemistry.
Goldberg served as director of the first National Science Foundation-funded Phase II Center for Chemical Innovation (CCI), the Center for Enabling New Technologies through Catalysis (CENTC) from 2007-17. In 2107, she moved to the University of Pennsylvania as a Vagelos Professor of Energy Research and is the inaugural Director of the Vagelos Institute of Energy Science and Technology (VIEST).
About the Center for Sustainable Polymers
The National Science Foundation Center for Sustainable Polymers (CSP) works to transform how plastics are made, unmade, and remade through innovative research, engaging education, and diverse partnerships that together foster environmental stewardship. CSP participants aim to design, prepare, and implement polymers derived from renewable resources for a wide range of advanced applications, and to promote future economic development, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability in the emergent area of biobased products.
This lecture is sponsored by Covestro, a world-leading manufacturer of high-tech polymer materials for key industries. In addition to Covestro, this public lecture is sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Sustainable Polymers, the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.