The Environmental Genome Initiative

The Environmental Genome Initiative team has extensive expertise in chemical engineering, industrial engineering, human health science, and nonprofit management. Their industry experience includes aviation, agriculture, building materials, energy, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and textiles. Their work in green energy, product, process, and supply chain design; as well as global population exposures to chemicals informs our work. Their exciting work leads the early effort to fully map and develop high value from the environmental genome.

International Advisory Council

Michael Overcash, PhD

Dr. Overcash has been at the forefront of several important research and development fields related to environment, manufacturing, and systems analysis. He led the development of design methods for the beneficial reuse of biosolids in agriculture and silviculture. His early research in reducing chemical losses in manufacturing led to an award of the EPA Research Center for Pollution Prevention. Expanding the prevention effort led to development of engineering tools to assess manufacturing energy and chemical efficiency and what is now known as transparent life cycle analysis. The discovery of the repeatable environmental genome structure and verification studies have started the larger effort to map the environmental genome. He is author or co-author of 14 books, 135 journal articles and 280 conference papers. His research grants have exceeded $9 million.

For the Environmental Genome Initiative, a non-profit, Dr. Overcash serves as the Executive Director. He has set the standards for the quality control and peer review of all the environmental genome elements to date (about 1,600 chemical plant analyses). He is on the Board of Directors and is helping to develop the various utilization communities that will develop analytics for the open-source environmental genome database.

Dr. Overcash served as a Professor in Chemical Engineering and in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at North Carolina State University. Recently he served as the Sam Bloomfield Chair in Sustainable Engineered Systems at Wichita State University. He was a senior scientist at the U.S. Office of Naval Research in London, has been a visiting professor of chemical engineering at the University of Cambridge and at Imperial College in the UK, and visiting scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, England. He received the Young Researcher Award from the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, the Institute Environment Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Distinguished Scientist Award, and the National Wastewater Management Excellence Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

His degrees in Chemical Engineering are BS at North Carolina State University, MS at University of New South Wales (as a Fulbright Scholar), and PhD at University of Minnesota.

Mark Bensen

Mark Bensen is a consultant with over 30 years of experience as a nonprofit leader in human service organizations, higher education, and private foundations. His clients include individuals and families creating new private foundations, nonprofits building their organization’s leadership, development, and strategic plans, and corporations planning new philanthropic or social responsibility initiatives. In his most recent positions, Mark served as President of two of North Carolina’s largest charitable foundations, the Triangle Community Foundation and The Kenan Funds.
Mark has advised the leadership of the Environmental Genome Initiative on its initial work to create a nonprofit corporation, research-effective open source models, and plan for resource development that will allow it to scale its work.

In past roles, Mark served as Vice President of Technology Development for Bensen Aircraft Corporation and as executive director of Operation Raleigh USA, an international youth leadership, scientific research, and community service organization initiated by HRH The Prince of Wales. Mark was later appointed associate director of the newly established William R. Kenan, Jr. Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science at NC State University. There he helped deploy philanthropic resources to create strategic partnerships and grant making initiatives among public, private, and government funding agencies. From 2006 to 2012, Mark Bensen served as executive vice president of MDC, a national nonprofit research organization and foundation intermediary.

He has served on the boards of over a dozen nonprofits, including the North Carolina World Trade Center and the International Affairs Council of the Triangle. In 1988, North Carolina Governor James Hunt awarded him the Order of the Long Leaf Pine for his work in youth leadership development.
Mark graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Olivier Jolliet, PhD

Dr. Olivier Jolliet is a Full Professor in life cycle impact and risk modeling at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health, University of Michigan. His teaching and research aim to a) model population exposure, (product-) intake fractions and pharmacokinetics of pesticides and chemicals at global level, and b) compare the life cycle risks and benefits of consumer products, and foods Olivier is also one of the founders of Quantis-International, which provides Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) expertise to companies and governments.

Olivier is collaborating within the Environmental Genome Initiative to create an exposome-based extension to quantify dominant exposures for millions of product-chemical combinations. He is developing product specific far and near-field models to relate environmental and human compartments by cumulative transfers fractions, in order to quantify millions of “chemical in product intake fractions”, as a basis for determining the product related exposome of worker and consumers.

He co-initiated the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, a joint initiative of the United Nation Environment Program and the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and is managing the effort of more than 100 scientists worldwide towards guidance on and development of impact assessment approaches, including the USEtox consensus model, which can be used to screen the toxic impacts of 3000 chemicals. Dr. Jolliet has been one of the pioneers in applying LCA to health impacts of chemicals and food sustainability since the early 1990’s, and he has developed comprehensive Life Cycle Impact Assessment Methods, such as the IMPACT2002 method. He has been co-awarded the 2014 US-EPA level II Scientific and Technological Achievement Awards.

Olivier obtained a Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Physics in 1988 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He worked as a postdoc at the Silsoe Research Institute (GB), as a visiting scholar at MIT and Berkeley (USA) and a visiting professor at University of Sydney in 2013. Between 1999 and 2005, he was assistant professor at the EPFL (Switzerland).

Concepcion Jiménez-González, PhD

Dr. Concepción “Conchita” Jiménez-González has 25 years of experience in the pharmaceuticals and chemical industries; including multinational experience in R&D, support functions, manufacturing and supply. She is a life cycle inventory and assessment practitioner, and has led the development of analytic tools to streamline life cycle assessment of chemicals to drive business decisions, as well as several methodologies to use computer modeling techniques into design of chemicals and chemical processes.

Conchita developed much of the Genome heuristics, and brings her expertise on life cycle inventory, life cycle assessment, tool development and green chemistry to provide strategic and scientific direction to the program. She is also instrumental in visioning the uses for the database information.

She is currently Program Lead at GlaxoSmithKline, where she has had a series of roles of increasing responsibility, including Director of New Product Development, Director of Operational Sustainability, Director of Engagement, Planning, Analysis and Reporting; amongst others. Prior to GSK she worked for GeoEnvironmental Consultants; ITESM in Mexico; and as visiting researcher at Pfizer. In addition to her job at GSK, she is an adjunct professor at North Carolina State University’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, and serves in the Governing Board of the American Chemistry Society’s Green Chemistry Institute. She is a Fellow of the IChemE, received the 2010 Industrial Practice in Sustainable Engineering Award from AIChE’s Sustainable Engineering Forum, and was appointed to the EPA’s Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals.

Conchita holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University; an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from ITESM; México and a B.S. in Chemical and Industrial Engineering at the Chihuahua Institute of Technology, México.

Evan Griffing, PhD

Dr. Evan Griffing is a specialist with 16 years of experience in environmental life cycle research. His activities often include work with industrial organizations, University projects, and providing life cycle inventory data for a variety of firms and organizations.

He developed the chemical process modeling and life cycle modeling software used in mapping the environmental genome which involves heuristics for unit processes sequenced in the environmental genome segments. He has a critical role in the scale-up to fully map the environmental genome, training mapping teams, and driving down the cost of the mapping work.

Evan has done numerous life cycle inventories on synthetic and biological routes in the chemical industry including commodity chemicals and solvents, catalysts, fine chemicals, agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, pharmaceutical excipients, and more. He cofounded Environmental Clarity to provide environmental consulting services, helped develop the life cycle program at the carbon capture and biofuel company LanzaTech, and contributed to LCA projects at Wichita State University on wind turbine materials and the impact of climate change on agriculture.
He received a BS from Cornell University and a PhD from Northwestern University, both in chemical engineering. He did life cycle research as a post doctoral researcher at North Carolina State University.

Alan Overcash

Alan Overcash, Chemical and Biochemical engineer, president of Southeastern Biochemicals, Inc., is working to produce economically viable biochemicals on a commercial-scale from crops and waste materials using fermentation and chemical processing technologies.

On the Board of Directors of the Environmental Genome Initiative, he is working with the leadership to help set up the necessary project management and financial infrastructure and will be a genome mapping team manager as the project becomes operational.

Alan retired from a 30-year career in Corporate Engineering at The Coca-Cola Company during which he worked to improve manufacturing processes, locate new sources of ingredients and develop processes to provide those ingredients on a commercial scale. He managed the design and construction of Company manufacturing facilities worldwide including development of novel water and wastewater treatment processes that met the highest treatment standards for these facilities. He also led teams of company engineers that developed strategic infrastructure plans for bottling networks in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Alan graduated with a BS in chemical engineering from NC State University, an MS in chemical and biochemical engineering from Rutgers University, and an EMBA from Georgia State University. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi and a professional engineer.

Matthew Realff, PhD

Dr. Matthew Realff’s overall research contributions are in process and sustainable systems engineering. He has current research projects in lignocellulosic pretreatment process invention, carbon dioxide capture from flue gas streams sponsored by the DOE, and in biobased chemical process design sponsored by NSF. He works on the development of life cycle inventory data for products such as carpet, flame retardants for circuit boards, and biofuels, and is currently working on CO2 life cycle optimization of algal-based biofuels.

In the Environmental Genome Initiative he has made major contributions in concepts for system analytics building on the fully mapped database. The systems concepts related to industrial manufacturing and use of other large databases. His background in machine learning will allow him to sift the environmental genome to uncover connections across the health, environment, and manufacturing domains.

He was the co-chair of the 2013 American Chemistry Society Green Chemistry Conference. In December 2013 he was appointed as the Associate Director of the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute with responsibility for advanced materials and separations applications for energy systems and in 2014 appointed as an Associate Director of the Renewable Bioproducts Institute to help develop programs in chemicals and fuels. He chairs standard development committees in sustainable product assessment for computer servers and photovoltaic panels.

Professor Realff completed his Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at Imperial College London in 1986, and a Ph.D. at MIT in 1992. He is the David Wang Senior Faculty Fellow in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Janet Twomey, PhD

Dr. Janet Twomey is an expert in sustainable engineered systems and computational intelligence. Dr. Twomey has received funding for her work in sustainability from the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation (NSF), and industry. Her work with Hawker Beechcraft helped her developed the first corporate sustainability program in the business aviation sector. Recently she has worked with Ascension Healthcare to develop a series of sustainability analyses in hospitals and the healthcare industry.

Her expertise in the application of environmental assessment of manufacturing and service systems is being applied on the Environmental Genome Initiative. Her work at the National Science Foundation in grants management will also benefit the Initiative’s management and growth and therefore Dr. Twomey serves on the Board of Directors for the Environmental Genome Initiative.

Dr. Janet Twomey currently serves as an Associate Dean for the College of Engineering and is charged with graduate education, research, and faculty success. Since 1994, she has been a Professor of Industrial Systems and Manufacturing Engineering at Wichita State University. She was a Program Officer at the National Science Foundation from 2001 to 2004 and served as the Academic Vice President on the Board of Trustees for the Institute of Industrial Engineering from 2013 to 2015. She received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early CAREER award for her work in neural networks and sparse data sets.

She received her PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) in Industrial Engineering. She also holds a BA in Sociology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Jason Hare

Jason Hare is the Open Data Evangelist for OpenDataSoft. He has worked in the Public Sector and in data dissemination for most of his 25-year career. His most recent work has been developing Open Data programs for the City and County of Durham and for the Town of Chapel Hill.

He contributes directly to developing concepts of for-profit aspects of the EG data, cloud-service provider interests, links with large organizations using environmental data, infrastructure-as-a-service, and big data collaborations. Jason has been involved in geospatial analysis of data relating to environmental carrying capacity and human response to environmental stress, an important outcome of the Environmental Genome database.

Jason Hare became a charter founder of the Open Data Institute Node for North Carolina in 2013. In the same year he became an Open Government Partnership (OGP) Delegate. Jason Hare has guest-blogged on the OGP website, worked with Colombia’s Ministry of Information and Communications, The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. He served on the Open Data Working Group for the US OGP Civil Society Delegation. Jason also consulted with the Open Knowledge Foundation to help craft Ireland’s OGP submission and has spent several years working on the ground with Irish Civil Society.

Jason Hare is a recognized expert on data quality and governance. He is listed as an open data expert by the World Bank and served on data quality issues as a member of the Open Data Working Group for the White House OSTP under the Obama Administration.

He earned his BS in Applied Anthropology, Summa Cum Laude, at Washington State University and attended graduate studies in Cognitive and Applied Archaeology at Simon Fraser University.

Jackie Isaacs, PhD

Dr. Jacqueline A. Isaacs is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Northeastern University, where she recently served as Acting Chair. Dr. Isaacs has a secondary appointment in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, and is an associate director of the NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN). Her research interests include assessment of the regulatory, economic, environmental and ethical issues facing the development of nanomanufacturing and other emerging technologies. Dr Isaacs’ research group works on various aspects of life cycle assessment and to assess and compare processes or products alternatives with respect to materials and design choices.

Isaacs has participated in workshops to help develop guidelines and data for the environmental genome, particularly manufacturing unit processes related to nano-manufacture of carbon nanotubes and powder processing. She has also been at the forefront of using unit processes to build manufacturing analysis for data in the environmental genome.

Her 1998 NSF Career Award, one of the first that focused on environmentally benign manufacturing, had a powder metallurgy theme. Dr. Isaacs also guides research on development and assessment of educational computer games that aim to offer students an exploration of environmentally benign processes and supply chains in manufacturing. As part of CHN team leadership, she received a Northeastern University President’s Aspiration Award in 2005, and she was recognized for teaching and mentoring accomplishments with a University-wide Excellence in Teaching Award in 2000 and a 2015 COE Excellence in Mentoring Award. She is also a 2013 ELATE Fellow.

She received a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University and S.M and Sc.D. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eric Vozzola

Eric specializes in transparent life cycle assessments. His work includes a wide variety of products such as building materials, garments, carpets, and pharmaceuticals. He has generated life cycle inventories as environmental genome elements for over 130 products and processes, including synthetic and natural-based chemicals, metal ores, epoxy resins and hardeners, glass and carbon fibers, and unit processes for metalworking.

Eric’s life cycle inventory development at Environmental Clarity has expanded the baseline of data for the Environmental Genome Initiative. Eric has tested the approach of developing transparent life cycle inventory data based on standard chemical process engineering principles. He has also led efforts to graphically represent the manufacturing supply chain and associated emissions for complex industrial chemicals.

Eric performed research at Wichita State University from 2014-2016 as part of the National Science Foundation Sustainable Energy Pathways program. The project established environmental data for the complete life cycle of wind turbine blades with a focus on the utilization of renewable materials in the manufacturing stage. Prior to his work in life cycle assessment, Eric served in roles at food manufacturing and building materials manufacturing facilities.

Eric graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Florida in 2011.

James Ewell

James’ work has focused primarily on optimizing product sustainability through more informed
chemical and material selection processes and design for reutilization strategies. He has
developed tools and resources to help downstream manufacturers obtain greater transparency
about the chemicals used to manufacture their products. James has been promoting the
Environmental Genome Initiative to government, academic and non-profit stakeholders to
demonstrate its value in better defining the expos ome and understanding the manufacturing life
cycle impacts of all chemicals used in industry. More recent work has focused on research and
potential value of the Environmental Genome for advanced recycling technologies to
significantly scale the reutilization of waste plastics. James has been instrumental in evaluating
Foundation, Government, and Corporate opportunities for supporting the Environmental
Genome.

As Senior Director of GreenBlue’s Sustainable Materials program, James is responsible for
managing the development and practical implementation of its sustainable materials management
framework. He has extensive knowledge and experience in sustainable product design and
manufacturing, chemical transparency and supply chain management. As Director of Consulting
for McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), James developed and implemented
Cradle-to-Cradle criteria for designing and manufacturing sustainable products and improving
corporate practices. He holds an MA in Urban and Environmental Planning from the University
of Virginia, and a BA in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Peter Fantke, Ph.D.

Peter Fantke (PhD) is Associate Professor in quantitative sustainability assessment at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).Over the last 10 years, Dr. Fantke has develop methods for assessing environmental fate, human and ecosystem exposure, and toxicological impacts of chemicals for use in different science and policy fields including life cycle impact assessment, external cost analysis, socioeconomic analysis, environmental risk assessment, alternatives assessment and chemical substitution. He is executive manager of USEtox, the UNEP/SETAC scientific consensus model for characterizing toxicity impacts of chemicals.

In the context of the application of the Environmental Genome, Peter Fantke develops exposure metrics and mass balance based tools that can be consistently coupled with outcomes of the Environmental Genome to arrive at life cycle exposure estimates across different population groups including workers, consumers and the general public. Once, such exposure estimates are available, they can serve to identify priority chemicals and products that should be targeted for emission and exposure eduction across a wide range of chemical-product combinations. Peter Fantke coordinates global task forces on quantifying emissions of pesticides and addressing health effects from exposure to chemicals, and has been awarded a European Career Integration Grant for his work on chemical toxicity characterization. Peter received his MSc in Geoecology from the Department of Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation at the University of Potsdam, Germany and his Ph.D. in Technology Assessment and Environment from the Department of Energy Economics and the Rational Use of Energy at the University of Stuttgart, Germany