Emerging Sustainability Leader Award
2026 Recipient
Assistant Prof Katrina Knauer | 2026 ESLA Winner
Dr. Katrina (Kat) Knauer has been selected as the 2026 MDPI Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) winner for her visionary leadership in transforming plastics into a truly circular materials platform. She is recognized for uniting fundamental polymer science with scalable engineering and systems analysis to deliver solutions that are environmentally impactful, economically viable, and nationally significant.
She earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Florida State University and her Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Southern Mississippi. Early in her career, she reframed plastic waste as a materials design and infrastructure challenge rather than solely a disposal issue. During her industrial postdoctoral appointment at BASF, she advanced recycling technologies while gaining critical insight into the technical and market barriers limiting large-scale circularity. She then joined Novoloop Inc. as an early technical leader, where she helped develop and commercialize LifeCycled™, a high-performance thermoplastic polyurethane made from recycled polyethylene feedstocks—demonstrating how advanced chemistry can translate into market-ready circular products.
In 2021, she joined the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly NREL) as a Senior Researcher in Polymer Science and Engineering and Chief Technology Officer of the BOTTLE™ Consortium. There, she has helped shape national strategy to keep thermoplastics out of landfills and the environment by advancing catalytic depolymerization, scalable separation technologies, and recyclable-by-design polymers. Her work integrates techno-economic and life-cycle analysis to ensure practical deployment and has contributed to the launch of EsterCycle™, which addresses mixed plastic packaging waste, and Tereform, which focuses on textile recycling.
Concurrently, she serves as an Assistant Adjoint Professor and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) Fellow in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she mentors the next generation of engineers in circular materials design. The 2026 ESLA recognizes her sustained impact across industry, entrepreneurship, federal research leadership, and academia—advancing plastics as materials engineered for continuous value within a regenerative economy.
She earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Florida State University and her Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Southern Mississippi. Early in her career, she reframed plastic waste as a materials design and infrastructure challenge rather than solely a disposal issue. During her industrial postdoctoral appointment at BASF, she advanced recycling technologies while gaining critical insight into the technical and market barriers limiting large-scale circularity. She then joined Novoloop Inc. as an early technical leader, where she helped develop and commercialize LifeCycled™, a high-performance thermoplastic polyurethane made from recycled polyethylene feedstocks—demonstrating how advanced chemistry can translate into market-ready circular products.
In 2021, she joined the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly NREL) as a Senior Researcher in Polymer Science and Engineering and Chief Technology Officer of the BOTTLE™ Consortium. There, she has helped shape national strategy to keep thermoplastics out of landfills and the environment by advancing catalytic depolymerization, scalable separation technologies, and recyclable-by-design polymers. Her work integrates techno-economic and life-cycle analysis to ensure practical deployment and has contributed to the launch of EsterCycle™, which addresses mixed plastic packaging waste, and Tereform, which focuses on textile recycling.
Concurrently, she serves as an Assistant Adjoint Professor and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) Fellow in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she mentors the next generation of engineers in circular materials design. The 2026 ESLA recognizes her sustained impact across industry, entrepreneurship, federal research leadership, and academia—advancing plastics as materials engineered for continuous value within a regenerative economy.
