Terry Collins
Professor Carnegie Mellon University
- Pittsburgh PA
Terry Collins teaches Chemistry & Sustainability, is the principal inventor of TAML oxidation catalysts and Creator-Founder of Sudoc, LLC.
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Media Appearances
Op-ed: To curb chronic disease in Americans, the FDA needs to assert regulatory control over toxic chemicals in our food
Enviromental Health News online
2025-05-15
As senior environmental health researchers and physicians, we are united in our concern about the escalating prevalence of chronic diseases in the United States. To stop the increase of these chronic disease epidemics, it is essential to change the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s current lack of regulatory oversight of toxic chemicals in food.
Terry Collins, PhD: Hope for the Future in Novel Catalysts – TAMLs
Poisoning Our Children Blod online
2024-10-11
A prolific researcher, Dr. Collins is the Teresa Heinz Professor in Green Chemistry and Director of the Institute for Green Science at Carnegie Mellon. He is primarily responsible for inventing green oxidation catalysts that are able to clean up endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in water and other matrices with a minimum of health risks themselves; the technology is heading toward pilot and demonstration trials. It was no surprise to me that in addition to being a great chemist, he is also at heart a great humanist.
Your Contact Lenses May Be a Hidden Source of 'Forever Chemicals'
ScienceAlert online
2023-05-12
Terrence Collins, a chemist at Carnegie Mellon University, explains to Mamavation that fluoropolymers like PFAS are cheap and effective materials for manufacturers to use for contact lenses. But he is frustrated by the lack of federal requirements for chemical disclosures and testing.
Terry Collins: PFAS removal discovery not yet a ‘powerful solution’
Environmental Health News online
2022-08-25
Researchers at Northwestern University last week published a breakthrough paper in the journal Science touting a new way of destroying PFAS molecules – dubbed the “forever chemical” for its engineered longevity. Carnegie Mellon University chemist Terry Collins offers a counterpoint on the optimism.
'Forever chemicals' found in drinking water across the US pose health risks even in small amounts, EPA says
Insider online
2022-06-16
The EPA advisory is nonbinding, but it represents an "epic" shift in regulation, Terrence Collins, director of the Institute for Green Science at Carnegie Mellon University, told Insider.
Sudoc Named Startup To Watch by Chemical & Engineering News
Carnegie Mellon University News online
2021-11-24
Sudoc, a startup co-founded by Carnegie Mellon University chemists Terrence J. Collins and Ryan C. Sullivan, has been named one of 10 startups to watch by Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). Sudoc is developing and commercializing TAML catalysts, a bioinspired environmentally friendly molecule that outperforms toxic chemicals in a wide range of applications and can be used to remove pollutants from natural and built environments.
Catalysts efficiently and rapidly remove BPA from water
ScienceDaily online
2017-08-02
Carnegie Mellon University chemist Terrence J. Collins has developed an approach that quickly and cheaply removes more than 99 percent of bisphenol A (BPA) from water. BPA, a ubiquitous and dangerous chemical used in the manufacturing of many plastics, is found in water sources around the world.
Media
Social
Industry Expertise
Accomplishments
Heinz Award for the Environment
2010
Charles E. Kaufman Award of the Pittsburgh Foundation
2008
Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand
2008
Fellow
2013
American Chemical Society
The Environment Award
2018
Carnegie Science Center
Education
The University of Auckland
M.Sc.
Chemistry
1975
The University of Auckland
Ph.D.
Chemistry
1978
The University of Auckland
B.Sc.
Chemistry
1974
Affiliations
- Sudoc : Creator-founder & Board Member
Links
Patents
Far superior oxidation catalysts based on macrocyclic compounds
US10926248B2
2021-02-23
An especially robust compound and its derivative metal complexes that are approximately one hundred-fold superior in catalytic performance to the previously invented TAML analogs is provided having the formula:
Articles
Catalytic Oxidation of Naphthalene and Polycyclic Arenes byIron(III) TAML/H2 O 2 in Water Aiming at Their Efficient Removalfrom Aqua Natural Systems
ChemEurJ2025
The electron transfer from naphthalene at an oxidized iron TAML species (TAML = tetraamido macrocyclic ligand) is a key step of its environmentally relevant deep degradation by hydrogen peroxide in water leading first to naphthoquinones which are further converted to smaller fragments. Other polycyclic arenes are also oxidized, often faster than naphthalene consistent with their lower ionization potentials than that of naphthalene.
Advancing the Sustainability of the Pharmaceutical Industry: TAML/Peroxide Destroys Trace Pharmaceuticals where Unprecedented Efficiencies Increase with Decreasing TAML Concentrations
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering2024
The Conflict between Regulatory Agencies over the 20,000-Fold Lowering of the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) for Bisphenol A (BPA) by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)
Environmental Health Perspectives2024
BPA is an extensively studied high production volume endocrine disrupting chemical (EDC) associated with a vast array of diseases. Prior risk assessments of BPA by EFSA as well as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have relied on industry-funded studies conducted under good laboratory practice protocols (GLP) requiring guideline end points and detailed record keeping, while also claiming to examine (but rejecting) thousands of published findings by academic scientists. Guideline protocols initially formalized in the mid-twentieth century are still used by many regulatory agencies. EFSA used a 21st century approach in its reassessment of BPA and conducted a transparent, but time-limited, systematic review that included both guideline and academic research. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) opposed EFSA's revision of the TDI for BPA.
A vision for safer food contact materials: Public health concerns as drivers for improved testing
Environment International2023
Food contact materials (FCMs) and food contact articles are ubiquitous in today’s globalized food system. Chemicals migrate from FCMs into foodstuffs, so called food contact chemicals (FCCs), but current regulatory requirements do not sufficiently protect public health from hazardous FCCs because only individual substances used to make FCMs are tested and mostly only for genotoxicity while endocrine disruption and other hazard properties are disregarded. Indeed, FCMs are a known source of a wide range of hazardous chemicals, and they likely contribute to highly prevalent non-communicable diseases. FCMs can also include non-intentionally added substances (NIAS), which often are unknown and therefore not subject to risk assessment.
European Medicines Agency Conflicts With the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on Bisphenol A Regulation
Journal of the Endocrine Society2023
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has revised their estimate of the toxicity of bisphenol A (BPA) and, as a result, have recommended reducing the tolerable daily intake (TDI) by 20 000-fold. This would essentially ban the use of BPA in food packaging such as can liners, plastic food containers, and in consumer products. To come to this conclusion, EFSA used a systematic approach according to a pre-established protocol and included all guideline and nonguideline studies in their analysis. They found that Th-17 immune cells increased with very low exposure to BPA and used this endpoint to revise the TDI to be human health protective. A number of regulatory agencies including the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have written formal disagreements with several elements of EFSA's proposal.
Detoxification of oil refining effluents by oxidation of naphthenic acids using TAML catalysts
Science of The Total Environment2021
The environmental problem stemming from toxic and recalcitrant naphthenic acids (NAs) present in effluents from the oil industry is well characterized. However, despite the numerous technologies evaluated for their destruction, their up-scaling potential remains low due to high implementation and running costs. Catalysts can help cutting costs by achieving more efficient reactions with shorter operating times and lower reagent requirements.
Transformative Catalysis Purifies Municipal Wastewater of Micropollutants
ACS ES&T Water2021
We describe the use of TAML/peroxide to reduce micropollutants (MPs) in Tucson, AZ, secondary municipal wastewater. The laboratory studies establish simple-to-apply MP abatements rivaling ozone in technical performance. The approach rests on the latest-generation TAML catalyst, 2, currently the highest-technical performance H2O2 activator across both chemistry and biology. Thirty-eight MPs were examined with five 2/H2O2 treatments (50 nM 2 with 22.4 ppm H2O2, 100 nM 2 with 11.2 ppm H2O2, 100 nM 2 with 22.4 ppm H2O2, 200 nM 2 with 11.2 ppm H2O2, and 200 nM 2 with 22.4 ppm H2O2) and four ozone treatments (2, 4, 6, and 8 ppm).
Designing Materials for Aqueous Catalysis: Ionic Liquid Gel and Silica Sphere Entrapped Iron-TAML Catalysts for Oxidative Degradation of Dyes
Environmental Science & Technology2020
Materials have been developed that encapsulate a homogeneous catalyst and enable it to operate as a heterogeneous catalyst in water. A hydrophobic ionic liquid within the material was used to dissolve Fe-TAML and keep it from leaching into the aqueous phase. One-pot processes were used to entrap Fe-TAML in basic ionic liquid gels, and ionic liquid gel spheres structured via a modified Stöber synthesis forming SiO2 particles of uniform size.
Bioinspired, Multidisciplinary, Iterative Catalyst Design Creates the Highest Performance Peroxidase Mimics and the Field of Sustainable Ultradilute Oxidation Catalysis (SUDOC)
ACS Catalysis2019
Oxidation catalysts called NewTAMLs, macrocyclic complexes with TAML carbonamido-N donors replaced by more nucleophile-resistant binders, sulfonamido-N, for example, [Fe{4-NO2C6H3-1,2-(NCOCMe2NSO2)2CHMe}]− (5d), deliver record-setting technical performance parameters (TPPs) for functional peroxidase mimicry. NewTAMLs were designed to test the previously discounted hypothesis that nucleophilic decay of carbonamido-N iron chelators is TAML catalyst lifetime-limiting and, for precautionary reasons, to escape fluorine in the best-performing TAML (1c) for catalyzing ultradilute water purification by H2O2.
Call to restrict neonicotinoids
Science2018
Neonicotinoids are the most widely used insecticides in the world. They are applied to a broad range of food, energy, and ornamental crops, and used in domestic pest control. Because they are neurotoxins, they are highly toxic to insects, a group of organisms that contains the majority of the described life on Earth, and which includes numerous species of vital importance to humans such as pollinators and predators of pests.
Targeting of High-Valent Iron-TAML Activators at Hydrocarbons and Beyond
Chemical Reviews2017
TAML activators of peroxides are iron(III) complexes. The ligation by four deprotonated amide nitrogens in macrocyclic motifs is the signature of TAMLs where the macrocyclic structures vary considerably. TAML activators are exceptional functional replicas of the peroxidases and cytochrome P450 oxidizing enzymes. In water, they catalyze peroxide oxidation of a broad spectrum of compounds, many of which are micropollutants, compounds that produce undesired effects at low concentrations—as with the enzymes, peroxide is typically activated with near-quantitative efficiency.
Research Focus
DEVELOPING POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS OF GREEN OXIDATION CATALYSTS
TAML activators do their catalytic work at remarkably low concentrations, low micromolar to nanomolar. By using design understanding informed by mechanistic insight, we have been able to produce variants that oxidize many pollutants in water over a wide range of reaction conditions. The list includes persistent chlorinated phenols, natural and synthetic estrogens, active pharmaceutical agents, dyes and colored lignin fragments, chemical warfare agents, persistent explosives residuals, pesticides, and colored and smelly pollutants from the pulp and paper industry. High performance disinfection of hardy pathogens including bacterial spores and clostridia has also been discovered. Students learn how to follow these processes using a range of analytical techniques.
MECHANISMS OF ACTION OF GREEN OXIDATION CATALYSTS
In water with hydrogen peroxide (or some other oxidizing agents), TAML activators produce exceptionally strong oxidizing systems that generally perform rapidly and are capable of large turnover numbers. The reaction chemistry is usually highly efficient in hydrogen peroxide use and appears to be primarily non-radical in nature. We design ways to kinetically isolate the various steps in the complex catalytic cycle and then measure the rate behavior as we work to construct a full quantitative picture of the catalysis. Students learn how to perform kinetic studies on complex catalytic systems including stopped-flow and conventional techniques.
DESIGN OF GREEN OXIDATION CATALYSTS
We design homogeneous oxidation catalysts to activate the natural oxidants, hydrogen peroxide and oxygen. By following an iterative design protocol, we have developed TAML activators with iron as the active metal that are outstanding peroxidase mimics, but are only about 1% the size of the enzymes. Peroxidase enzymes are distributed widely in nature and activate hydrogen peroxide to oxidize organic substrates. We are continuing to develop our insight into how to control catalyst lifetime, reactivity and selectivity via ligand design and are producing new peroxidase mimics with targeted reactivity features. Students learn to design high performance oxidation catalysts and to apply synthetic organic and inorganic chemistry to enable their design work.
