Portland, OR – The annual meeting of green chemistry researchers, educators, and industrial actors commenced from June 18-20, and BCGC was again present and presenting. BCGC Executive Director Tom McKeag and Berkeley graduate student researcher Emily Cook gave a platform presentation: “Finding nature-inspired alternatives to PFASs in durable water repellency (DWR): an academic/industry approach,” which summarized the investigation undertaken by students in our Greener Solutions course in partnership with W.L. Gore. The challenge was to identify safer alternatives to PFASs  for durable water repellency (DWR) in high performance outerwear. Barbara Henry, toxicologist for WLGore, provided the company’s perspective on the collaboration in a subsequent talk: “‘Greener solutions’ and ‘PFCs of environmental concern.’” Together, the presentations gave complementary views of another  successful public-private collaboration to solve a thorny materials challenge.. A helpful summary of the collaboration as well as the full report can be found here.