ABET/Lemelson Innovation in Sustainability Award

I am surprised and humbled to be the recipient of the 2025 ABET and The Lemelson Foundation Engineering for One Planet Innovation in Sustainability Award.

The nomination

My colleague Jeremy Van Antwerp returned from the 2025 ABET Symposium (3-4 April in San Diego, CA) insisting that he nominate me for the award, despite the deadline being only a few weeks later on 20 April. I was hesitant, knowing that it would take a lot of Jeremy’s time and some of mine during the end-of-semester rush. But he convinced me.

After submitting the nomination (on 20 April, of course), Jeremy emailed the nomination files for my records and quipped, “In case you want to reuse these for any reason. (There’s always next year. 😉)” In my response the next morning, I said “Thanks for completing this nomination! I still feel quite weird/awkward about it. But thank you.”

The interregnum

After the push-up of completing the nomination, we endured the end-of-academic-year crunch. I started summer research on material exergy with a student. I traveled to Europe for the 2025 Exergy Economics workshop. I completely forgot about the nomination.

The notification

On 24 June, I received an email notifying me of the award while en-route to campus. I’m still in shock!

The preparation

I’m gathering information and media to be used for publicity around the award. (My new landing page photo was taken during a photo shoot for that purpose.) In addition, I have been asked to participate in an online interview in a few weeks. But since ABET announced their annual awardees, I am free to share the news publicly.

The ceremony

The award ceremony will be held on 24 October 2025 in Baltimore, MD.