Missouri S&T has been awarded a $19.8 million collaborative agreement to renew the National Science Foundation’s Center for Synthetic Organic Electrochemistry. This chemical innovation center will be led by Missouri S&T’s chemistry department and the university will partner with 13 additional institutions on the grant.

The goal of this NSF center is to mainstream the use of electrosynthesis to improve the safety and cost of manufacturing chemicals while also decreasing chemical waste through the creation of new reactions, better understanding of electrochemical reactivity, educating the next generation of chemists, materials scientists and engineers, and to provide education and outreach activities.

“My research team and colleagues throughout the country and world are working to make electrochemistry inventions more accessible in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing,” says Dr. Shelley Minteer, founding director of the Kummer Institute Center for Resource Sustainability and the Dr. Ken Robertson Memorial Professor in Chemistry at Missouri S&T. “Our work will benefit various industries, including pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, personal care products and other chemical processes that build off of each other.”

Minteer, lead investigator on the NSF project, joined Missouri S&T in 2023 as the founding director of the Kummer Institute Center for Resource Sustainability. She is also responsible for maximizing the capabilities and expertise of S&T’s faculty to strengthen the collaboration with industrial partners and research centers beyond S&T, and Minteer says that this center is an example of that work.

The NSF Center for Synthetic Organic Electrochemistry is an interdisciplinary center that combines the expertise of electrochemists, synthetic organic chemists, materials scientists, and engineers to tackle this grand challenge in the chemical industry, while also providing new educational materials and laboratories to train the next generation of chemists to understand and use electrochemistry to solve chemistry problems.

“Missouri S&T has always led the charge to enhance current practices and develop new approaches across a vast array of industries,” says Justin Brown, Missouri state senator. “The research that is being conducted in our backyard at CSOE is another prime example that puts us at the forefront of discoveries that will help change the world for the better.”

For more information about the grant and its work, visit the center website at csoe.mst.edu.

About Missouri S&T 

Missouri University of Science and Technology is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to The Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.