Environmental Genome Initiative
Mapping the Global Web of Chemicals and Materials: Professor Matthew Realff, Professor Olivier Jolliet, and Dr. Michael Overcash are leading a team whose goal is to fully map the environmental genome (EG). They would create an open-source database and map of origin and development, in both time and place, of molecular building processes for the approximately 100,000 chemicals and materials used commercially to build nearly every product in current use by global society. For the first time, chemists, material scientists, and others will be able to utilize — quickly and in detail — the properties and environmental impacts at each stage of manufacture from the earth’s resources through the resultant product or innovation they produce.