NYC Center for Microplastics Solutions

An estimated 10 to 40 million metric tons of microplastics — plastic fragments up to 5 millimeters long — are released into the environment every year, and if current trends continue, that number could double by 2040. The effects of these byproducts have untold effects not only on ourselves, but the environment around us.

an ai-enabled machine that spells out NYU in plastic

The NYU Microplastics Center takes a dual-track approach, using high-throughput experimentation and AI to accelerate both:

Understanding: New tools and methods to detect, quantify, and trace how microplastics are formed, and how that depends on material characteristics and applications. We also seek to understand how microplastics disrupt human and environmental health.
Solutions: AI-accelerated design of next-generation polymers engineered to minimize toxic microplastic release.

Addressing this challenge requires rethinking polymer design from the ground up: pairing synthesis of new materials with rigorous characterization of how they fragment under real-world conditions. By uniting biomedical, chemical, and environmental engineers, polymer scientists, and medical researchers around shared high-throughput capabilities not widely available today, the Center closes the loop between discovery and design — accelerating the development of next-generation sustainable polymers with reduced microplastic generation potential, and working to make microplastics a problem of the past.

Our Approach

Experimental Platforms:

Polymer Synthesis and Processing

Supports rapid, parallel synthesis of novel polymers, including those from non-petroleum feedstocks, using both solvent-based and bulk liquid-phase polymerization.

Micro- and Nanoplastics Characterization

A complementary analytical suite spanning the nano-to-micro size range provides chemical identity, size distribution, and abundance data for degradation products.

Accelerated Degradation Testing

HT-compatible protocols covering the three primary pathways by which plastics fragment into MNPs in the environment: mechanical, chemical, and thermal.