AskScience: Got Questions? Get Answers.

I am professor Ilan Marek, (https://ilanmarek.technion.ac.il), one of the best synthetic organic chemists in the world today. I have received accolades every single year from different organizations and different countries (the last one being the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society, prize which is not frequently awarded to non-American citizens), and have been elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 2017 and to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2019. I am an editorial board member of a long list of important journals in organic chemistry from different countries and societies. I have educated 44 MSc and PhD students and 43 post-doctoral fellows in my career, 26 are now faculty members in different countries and the rest are occupying important positions in various chemical or pharmaceutical companies.

The world population is rapidly expanding. 2.5 new inhabitants (on average) are born every second. By 2050, our planet is going to be inhabited by 10+ billion people. To maintain and improve the global quality of life while meeting the needs of an expanding world population, the production of food, medicine, consumer, and new technology products must be increased to meet this growing demand. Can the world sustain its growing population in the same way we did up to now, without causing additional ecological damage and further depleting natural resources?

To give just one example of the increasing environmental impact of modern life, in the last 70 years, the production of plastic increased from 1.5 million tons per year in 1950 to 450 million tons per year in 2022. That would be fine if one knew how to handle plastics after usage. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Only 9% of plastic is recycled. In 2020 alone, more than 20 million tons of plastics ended up in the sea, creating a floating mass twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. If we keep on like this, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish. If that's not enough, recent studies found micro particles of plastic in people's blood and lungs.

We are in a situation where drastic changes are needed. To support the needs of the growing population, to maintain and improve the life expectancy and life quality we're taking for granted, we cannot just produce more. We need to produce better.

The answer, I believe, lies in catalysis.

A catalyst is any substance that triggers or speeds up a chemical reaction. Catalysts are crucial for life itself: they control our cells, perform our digestion, form part of our immune systems. Catalysts also make modern life possible: they play key roles in food production, drug and materials manufacturing, energy production and many other fields. It is hard to imagine the world today, or indeed civilized society in general, without the impact of catalysis on all fundamental aspects required for life.

Catalysis stands at the nexus of many disciplines, enabling discoveries that impact areas as diverse as health (e.g., medicine, imaging), food (agrichemicals), energy (efficiency, storage, sustainable manufacturing) and more, and as such, forms an important part of the global economy. It is generally associated with underpinning approximately 30% of global GDP, representing roughly 3 trillion USD, and is involved at some point in the processing of 90% of all manufactured products.

To answer these crucial problems, The Technion has created the Resnick Sustainability Center for Catalysis - the first of its kind in Israel and one of only a handful of similar projects worldwide - embodies a compelling vision: Innovation in catalysis is key to solving many of the great challenges facing us today. The goal of the Center is to discover and develop new catalysts touching many different fields. This will be achieved by harnessing the Technion's stellar resources in chemistry, biotechnology, physics, biology, computer science, chemical engineering, materials engineering and food engineering - all within a single facility. The Center will serve as an incubator for talent, ideas and solutions, not only strengthening the Technion's reputation as a world leader in this area but also potentially ensuring that the Israeli economy benefits from the improved industrial processes and a lucrative set of exportable technologies that will result from their implementation.

In contrast to the traditional laboratory setup - in which researchers work in isolation from each other - The Resnick Sustainability Center for Catalysis will feature an innovative open space research laboratory model, providing lab space for new faculty members and their teams. There are several reasons for this approach: to enhance multidisciplinary collaboration in a field that is evolving ever more rapidly, to pool the use of advanced pieces of equipment among multiple researchers, and to encourage researchers from two or more academic disciplines to combine their expertise to solve major problems in the field. The Technion believes that the pace of innovation and discovery made possible by this open-space laboratory setup is likely to exceed the pace expected from a conventional lab arrangement.