Collins Receives Pittsburgh Award

Collins is being cited for his contributions to green chemistry science, education, and advocacy. As head of the Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry at the Mellon College of Science, Collins' most noteworthy achievement is the creation of a new class of oxidation catalysts known as tetra-amido macrocyclic ligand activators, which experts believe can be used effectively to replace chlorine-based oxidants in many applications.

Collins earned both his bachelor's degree, in 1974, and his doctoral degree, in 1978, from the University of Auckland, in New Zealand. After postdoctoral work at Stanford, he served as a member of the faculty of California Institute of Technology before joining the Carnegie Mellon staff in 1987.

In addition to delivering more than 150 lectures since 2000, Collins has received the Environmental Protection Agency's 1999 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award and Japan's Society of Pure & Applied Coordination Chemistry Award. He is an honorary professor at the University of Auckland, a fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the World Innovation Institute, and a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. Collins has served on numerous green chemistry research and funding evaluation panels, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development Workshop on the Funding of Sustainable Chemistry (Tokyo, 2000). He led the ACS-PRF Pan-American Green Chemistry Summer School for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in 2004.