Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation to host Heinz Dist. Lecture on Sustainable Design

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH NEWS RELEASE

PITTSBURGH  (November 13, 2012) ... Eco-friendly buildings cannot be designed "by accident" and require innovative planning to withstand a more sustainable future. With this in mind, the University of Pittsburgh will present the 2012 Heinz Distinguished Lecture, "Designing Tomorrow," at 4 p.m. Nov. 27 in the ballroom of the University's William Pitt Union, 3959 Fifth Ave., Oakland.

"The reason that our world works the way it does today is because we have designed it to operate this way," said featured speaker Paul T. Anastas, Yale University's Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment. "If we are going to have a tomorrow that is more sustainable than today, it will be because we design it to be that way."

In his presentation, Anastas will discuss the design framework needed for a more sustainable future, including protocols and metrics, along with the incentives and capabilities needed for such innovative change.

A 5 p.m. cocktail reception will follow the lecture in the William Pitt Union Lower Lounge. 

Interested participants should register online by Nov. 20 at  www.mascarocenter.pitt.edu/heinzlecture . Validated parking will be provided directly across from the William Pitt Union in the Soldiers and Sailors Parking Garage, 4215 Fifth Ave., Oakland. Participants should bring parking tickets to the registration desk for validation. For more information, e-mail Kim Wisniewski at  kaw54@pitt.edu .

Paul T. Anastas  holds appointments in Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Chemical Engineering. In addition, Anastas serves as director of the Yale Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, from which he took public service leave from 2009 to 2012 to serve as the assistant administrator and science advisor for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Previously, he served as director of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C., and served as assistant director for the environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Anastas is credited with establishing the field of green chemistry during his tenure as chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch and as the director of the U.S. Green Chemistry Program at the Environmental Protection Agency. He has 11 books published, among them Benign by Design (American Chemical Society, 1994), Designing Safer Polymers (Wiley-Interscience, 2000), Green Engineering (Oxford University Press, 2000), and, with coauthor John Warner, his seminal work, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2000). 

The Heinz Distinguished Lectureship is supported by a gift from the Heinz Endowments for the establishment of a Green Construction and Sustainable Development Program in the Pitt Swanson School of Engineering's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The lectureship is an annual event, cosponsored by Pitt's Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, that aims to bring to the University innovative, thought-provoking, and forward-looking concepts appropriate for sustainable infrastructure development. 

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