Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry Grant

Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: American Chemical Society
Amount: Up to US $5,000
Last Updated: October 14, 2025

Summary

The Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering recognizes innovative advancements in green chemistry within the pharmaceutical sector. Established by the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable, this award highlights significant improvements in sustainability, efficiency, and safety in chemical processes. Recipients will share their work at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, with funding support for travel and lodging. This award aims to inspire future innovations in sustainable practices across the pharmaceutical industry.

Overview

Purpose The Peter J. Dunn Awards was established in 2016 by the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable (ACS GCIPR) to recognize excellence in the research, development, and execution of green chemistry that demonstrates compelling environmental, safety, and efficiency improvements over current technologies in the pharmaceutical industry and its allied industrial partners. The inaugural award was given to Peter J. Dunn of Pfizer and subsequently named in his honor. Description The award recognizes greener and more sustainable synthetic routes and their associated processes to Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) or intermediates, reaction conditions, and chemical or manufacturing process technologies. The submission should highlight the green and sustainable chemistry accomplishments at meaningful scale and must detail their significance (e.g., reduction in process mass intensity, waste reduction, robustness, environmental, health, and safety impact reduction or elimination, reduction in the use of toxic and/or hazardous chemicals, solvents, reagents, etc.). The innovations should be significant and ones that go beyond routine process development optimization. The 2025 award will be presented at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference. The recipient, or a member of the winning team, will be invited to share their technology in an oral presentation at this event. The recipient’s transportation, lodging, and registration fees for the conference are reimbursable up to $2,500 USD (additional funds available for international travel following ACS guidelines). The recipient or winning team will also receive a plaque recognizing the achievement and certificates will be given to each team member.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. New accomplishments relative to the design principles of green chemistry at meaningful scale are eligible for this award. Nominations must detail the significance (i.e., in yield, waste reduction, robustness, environmental impact, reduction of toxic and/or hazardous chemicals, etc.) of the chemistry or engineering.The Peter J. Dunn Awards recognize the accomplishments of individuals—whether they be individual contributions or as part of team efforts. Therefore, the ACS GCIPR strongly encourages individuals to apply. However, please note that this is not a career achievement award, rather the focus is on a specific innovative technology developed by the nominee. Nominations may also include teams of up to ten people.The goal is to recognize both pioneering industrial scientists, as well as the best of green chemistry innovations, to inspire all pharmaceutical scientists (or allied industrial partners) to ever greater sustainability.

Ineligibility

Previous winning submissions from the EPA Green Chemistry Challenge Award are not eligible.