Department of Chemistry Professor Hui Peng has been selected for both the James Morgan Award and the Chemical Institute of Canada Environment Division Early Career Research Award.
According to Environmental Science and Technology, the James J. Morgan Early Career Award is given each year by ES&T, ES&T Letters, and the Environmental Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS). It recognizes imaginative early career colleagues who are making waves in environmental science and technology. Winners are described as people who are “innovating and advancing environmental science and technology in refreshing and meaningful ways.”
Dr. Peng’s research has focused on building a research program known as the environmental Chemical-Protein Interaction Network (eCPIN), with the aim of annotating the 7 billion binary interactions between manufactured chemicals and approximately 20,000 human proteins.
“Over 350,000 chemicals have been manufactured worldwide thus far, and some of them can be very toxic to humans and wildlife,” explains Peng. “My research aims to find out which chemicals are most harmful and then understanding the fundamental molecular mechanism behind their toxicity.”
Identifying the most toxic chemicals among hundreds of thousands of candidates is extremely difficult, he went on to say, but the Peng group has made significant progress in this direction lately by developing protein-centric bioanalytical chemistry approaches. These approaches aim to identify the toxic compounds binding to human proteins from mixtures of chemical contaminants (e.g, indoor dust).
“Surprisingly, our findings reveal that only a few chemicals cause a majority of the toxicity in environmental samples like indoor dust. This is exciting as we might focus on these prioritized chemicals for in-depth research or regulations.”
According to the EES award announcement, the breadth and depth of these research accomplishments, combined with vision and creativity, are what make Dr. Peng a leader in this field.
Peng’s award from the CIC, meanwhile, is one that recognizes an outstanding early career researcher who has made distinguished contributions in the fields of environmental chemistry or environmental chemical engineering.