The Kansas City Section of the American Chemical Society is soliciting nominations for the 2021 Kenneth A. Spencer Award. The award recognizes meritorious contributions to the field of agricultural and food chemistry. The Kansas City Section presents this award in the hope that it will give added stimulus in research, education, and industry to further progress in agricultural and food chemistry. More information on the History of this award, see the Kansas City Section website. Nominations should be submitted to Jon Tally following instructions on the application form webpage. The deadline for nominations for the award is November 15 of each year.
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2024 Awardee
Atuna Biswas has made significant contributions to fields ranging from polymer, analytical, medicinal chemistry to food research and to bioenergy for over 40 years. His research has been by broad knowledge and expertise of synthetic, organic, polymer, physical, and analytical chemistry as well as intimate familiarity with both agricultural and petrochemical feedstocks and commercial products derived therefrom. He is internationally recognized for pioneering polymer synthesis and modifications and contributions to development of bio-based plastics, coatings, films, hydrogels, absorbents, and bio-lubricants derived from agricultural feedstocks such as polysaccharides, vegetable oil, protein, edible beans, cotton, agricultural byproducts. His accomplishments include developing new products, processes, and methodologies that are of commercial significance.
His achievements span both private (Hercules Incorporated, Wilmington, DE now Ashland Inc.) and government (USDA/ARS) sectors. During 14 years at Hercules 4 of his discoveries were patented and commercialized. He discovered a new class of hydrocarbon resins to produce tackifiers for pressure sensitive adhesives, which generated millions of dollars of revenue for the company.
Atuna developed novel green processes to convert polysaccharides (starch, cellulose, and other sugars), soybean oil and agricultural byproducts into industrially important, bio-based products such as cellulose acetate or biodegradable plastics or lubricants. The conversion processes required the novel applications of organic chemistry (e.g., acid-catalyzed acylation, pericyclic reactions, click reaction, alkali cellulose reactions), and green polymer processes (e.g., use of microwave, enzymes and other catalysts, benign solvents, or no solvent, for reactions). Atuna produced bio composites involving important commercial polymers like polyethylene, PLA, together with nut shells, edible beans, cotton gin trash, and cottonseed hulls. In 2002, he joined USDA-ARS. In the past 20 years, he has authored/coauthored over 150 peer-reviewed journal publications.
In 2020, Atuna received Fulbright US Scholar award twice to lead research in Brazil. In 2014, he received the Science Without Border Award (2014 – 2017) by the government of Brazil, affording funds for post-doc fellows, travel, and related research funds for biopolymer research. Collaborations were built with leading Brazilian agricultural research institutes and included 6 trips and a total of 12 months stay in Brazil. In 2018, he was the opening keynote speaker for the Brazilian Soybean Growers Association conference, an event held every third year and attended by more than 1200 growers, processors, marketers, and research scientists.
More recently (2019), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) awarded Atuna a 4- month fellowship in Spain to lead and collaborate on BioPackaging for Food. In April 2019 he received the Chemist of the Year Award by the American Chemical Society (Heartland Section, Central Illinois). In 2020, he received the USDA ARS Innovation award, and in 2022 he received/was granted the 1890 Faculty Research Sabbatical Program.
Atuna established an Indian Music record company called Biswas Records in 1993, which was a pioneer in spreading Bengali music in USA. In 1994, Biswas Records was the first to produce digitally recorded Bengali music compact discs.