Professor Soumitra Athavale and graduate student Justin Manoff team up for a new Keck Foundation-funded project with powerful potential implications
By Jonathan Riggs, UCLA College
Almost all of the physical goods we interact with every day, from electronics to clothing to the fertilizers and packaging behind our food supply, are manufactured via industrial chemical synthesis. Using harsh chemicals, scarce metals and extensive energy input, these processes are effective but costly in every sense, taking a tangible toll on the health of the planet.
For decades now, scientists have been working toward a sustainable, more eco-friendly approach that has the potential to, quite literally, revolutionize the production of almost everything you touch.
Thanks to a recent grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, two UCLA scientists are launching a new project that they hope will yield some promising directions in providing a cleaner environment through green chemistry.
The project, “New-to-Nature Biocatalysis for Sustainable Hydrogenation,” pairs Soumitra Athavale, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry who is also the John D. and Edith M. Roberts Term Professor of Organic Chemistry, and doctoral student Justin Manoff.
In a nutshell, its goal is to create a new, cost-effective technology that reacts with renewable, easily grown biomolecules that do not create toxic bioproducts. In addition, they want to explore if their route will open up innovative pathways to creating different molecules that could lead to new products.
“These chemicals are constantly in demand, so the cumulative effect over time of a more renewable, green approach will be very impactful,” said Manoff. “We want to provide industrial chemists with better ways to do these reactions so the field can become more environmentally friendly.”
For Manoff, who had focused on synthetic organic chemistry during his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, the opportunity to work with Athavale was inspiring.
“I was really intrigued by his postdoctoral work with Nobel laureate Frances Arnold at Caltech, using engineered enzymes to drive chemical reactions,” Manoff said. “Being able to do this work without using super strong chemicals, expensive metals or toxic materials but instead using renewable catalysts is fascinating to me.”
Heartened by the project’s progress and green implications, the pair hope to publish a paper on it very soon. Making this important science even more meaningful to them both is the fact that they can move it forward so early in their careers — Athavale as a rising faculty member who joined UCLA in 2023 and Manoff as a graduate student — thanks to the Keck grant.
“I was the first graduate student to join Soumitra’s lab; it’s really exciting being in a lab that’s brand new so I can see the beginning of all this work and know the story the whole way through,” Manoff said. “Getting this support early on without a long history of papers yet is so helpful, and it’s inspiring to think about all the ideas Soumitra and I can explore and test now that we have this funding.”
In addition to enhancing their current progress, the grant has also been a boon to Manoff’s future growth as a scientist.
“I’m grateful to the Keck Foundation for providing this funding because it’s allowed me to be able to focus completely on research and get way more done than ever,” Manoff said. “We’ve been able to push this project forward at a much quicker rate, and I’m learning so much.”
Athavale agrees.
“This research will create new knowledge and technologies for sustainable catalysis of important reactions in chemistry and pharmaceutical manufacturing,” he said. “I am very grateful to the Keck Foundation for this support, which allowed us to drive this exciting work forward. Especially in today’s highly challenging federal funding environment, this has been a key lifeline for our group.”
This is part of a seven-part series of stories highlighting the impact of the W.M. Keck Foundation’s early-career bridge funding grants to UCLA; read them as they are published here.
