Innovating a more sustainable chemical industry: A Q&A with Miguel Modestino

The chemical industry touches upon every area of our lives. From the medicines we take to the materials that build our homes to the fertilizers that help grow what we eat, chemistry provides many of the building blocks of modern society. Yet, all too often, the industry has been a source of pollution, waste, and carbon emissions. Thankfully, the world is waking up to the need for cleaner, more sustainable practices, and when the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Center for Innovation and Entrepreneuring Excellence held its 2025 Chemical Ventures Conference – an event that draws hundreds of researchers, industry leaders, start-up founders, and investors each year — the focus was on circularity, sustainability, and the resiliency of materials and chemicals across their entire life cycle.

This year, the conference was held in Brooklyn, at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Organized by Miguel Modestino, Tandon’s Donald F. Othmer Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Director of the school’s Sustainable Engineering Initiative, and longtime industry leader Jay Amarasekera, the event opened with a welcome by Tandon’s Executive Dean, Juan de Pablo, and included addresses from respected figures like Brandon Owens, the Vice President for Innovation and Research at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority; Tim Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry at MIT; Andrew Chang, the Managing Director at Activate New York; and Anthony Schiavo, Senior Director and Principal Analyst at Lux Research. In between were panel discussions, chances to network, and start-up pitches from a variety of aspiring entrepreneurs working on new, more sustainable biobased materials, batteries, adhesives, and more.

Below, Modestino discusses the conference, the work being done at Tandon, and what the future might hold.

What stood out to you about the conference?

This is the seventh year that AIChE has held the Chemical Ventures Conference, and as you can tell from the name, it’s always been a venue for innovative, new ventures spanning several sectors within the chemical industry. This year, the event was focused on issues of sustainability and circularity, a term that refers to an approach aimed at eliminating waste by creating a closed-loop system, where products are used and either repurposed or reused, instead of a traditional linear system that does not prioritize the conservation of resources.

At the end of the conference, we hosted a gathering for academic chemical engineering leaders from all over the country to discuss how we, as educators, can nurture a new generation of environmentally conscious chemical entrepreneurs.

Why is sustainable chemical engineering such a hot topic?

We can’t keep doing things the way they’ve always been done. First of all, most chemical processes depend on nonrenewable materials like petroleum, and there is an opportunity to use other inexpensive feedstocks like biomass or plastic waste. We also know that conventional chemical processes can release toxic byproducts and CO₂ emissions that have a major negative impact on our health and the health of the planet. Sustainable practices help minimize those impacts, while at the same time helping achieve gains in efficiencies and reductions in cost. Our mindset must be focused on ensuring that the world can thrive technologically and economically without compromising the well-being of future generations.

Why was Tandon a good venue for an event like this?

The conference involved two areas of great strength for us as a school. First, we have dozens of faculty members who are part of the Sustainable Engineering Initiative I lead. Our Executive Dean, Juan de Pablo, often talks about responsible engineering, and that concept encompasses things like ethics and sustainability; in other words, every sector of engineering must take those factors into account. We’re also very concerned with fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. For example, we’re home to a thriving network of start-up incubators that includes the Urban Future Lab, a major hub of emerging climate-tech enterprises that focus on clean energy and sustainable infrastructure solutions. Start-ups in the network benefit from a large pool of faculty expertise and access to the necessary equipment found in labs like ours. That’s especially important for enterprises involving chemical processes, since you don’t find wet benches and fume hoods everywhere.

What exciting things are going on at Tandon in relation to entrepreneurship, sustainability, and chemical engineering?

In our own labs, we’ve hosted companies like Air Co — which recently developed a Sustainable Aviation Fuel made from captured CO2 — and Turnover Labs  — which is providing the chemical industry with carbon-neutral alternatives to petroleum-based building blocks — as our tenants and collaborators.

Those founders came to us from outside the school, but many of our own students now helm materials and chemical-based companies like Cresilon, Heliotrope, and Sunthetics, which were launched before their founders had even graduated.

Additionally, some of our newest faculty members are bringing in exciting new perspectives and new projects, like Pavel Kots, who is focused on addressing the problem of plastic waste, and Bridger Ruyle, who studies how human activity, the biosphere, and climate change affect water quality...that list could go on! And because we’re now realizing how much chemical contamination affects human health, many of our faculty members are deepening their collaborations with medical researchers at NYU Langone.

What are some of the obstacles faced by researchers?

There is a financial burden involved in turning science into products, which in the case of chemical manufacturing can sometimes reach hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to scale commercially. So funding is an issue if we’re going to enable mathematically risky but promising technological ideas.

It can also be difficult to structure research with an eye for commercialization. The goal is not to answer deep scientific questions, but to technically de-risk concepts and enhance their techno-economic viability and market fit, and this can challenge academics who must balance scientific interests with entrepreneurial focus. However, entrepreneurship can improve scientific work by concentrating efforts on societally impactful questions.

I must also admit that in academia, we haven’t always been good at communicating the value of what we do to the public. But researchers have a duty to contribute to ongoing national conversations. That can be hard, particularly in an era of growing mistrust of science and university expertise on the part of some segments of society, but it’s nonetheless important.

Funding the founders

Shepherding scientific innovations from the lab to the marketplace can be a complex process, and events like the Chemical Ventures Conference are invaluable sources of information and guidance. Andrew Chang of Activate New York — an organization dedicated to providing researchers with the support and resources they need to bring their groundbreaking discoveries to market — was on hand to discuss the challenges that all aspiring entrepreneurs will inevitably face.

Among the major takeaways of his presentation:

• We need to reinvent our economy to be sustainable, resilient, and equitable. Scientists can play a large role in shaping the future by bringing their research to market.
• It is easy for scientist-entrepreneurs to fall in love with their technology, but they must still be deeply focused on customers and their pain points.
• Many people talk about venture funding, but there are other sources of capital to consider, including grants, prizes, fellowships, accelerators, and revenue from customer prepayments and deposits.
• The fundraising environment is difficult, and a revenue-first mindset can help to de-risk customer demand and put you in a stronger position to fundraise in the future
• Meet your customers in the real world: gain an understanding of them and their needs, and engage them via pilot programs, co-development opportunities, and other such initiatives.
• Surrounding yourself with the right team, including advisors, can make all the difference.