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February 23, 2009 Contact: Tim Stephens (831) 459-2495; stephens@ucsc.edu Friends of Long Marine Lab will honor alumnus Brent Constantz with Global Oceans Award
The Friends of Long Marine Lab will honor entrepreneur and UCSC alumnus Brent Constantz at the group's annual Global Oceans Awards Gala on Saturday, February 28. The award recognizes Constantz for developing technology to make "green" cement that could help slow global warming and ocean acidification. When Constantz invented a revolutionary product for healing broken bones, he was inspired by the research on coral reefs he had conducted as a UCSC graduate student in the 1980s. Now, drawing on the same source of inspiration, he has come up with a new process for making cement that sequesters carbon dioxide. The standard manufacturing process for the cement used in concrete releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Constantz's process not only eliminates a major source of greenhouse gases, but actually captures carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, trapping the carbon in the cement. The company he founded to make this "green cement," Calera Corp., was recently profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle. Calera's subsidiary, Moss Landing Cement Company, is operating a pilot plant at Moss Landing, just down the coast from Santa Cruz. Constantz earned his Ph.D. in Earth sciences from UCSC in 1986. He was honored with the campus's Alumni Achievement Award in 1998. UCSC graduate students Kristine Okimura (ocean sciences) and Brenna Mahoney (ecology and evolutionary biology) will also receive awards at the dinner. They had the top-ranked proposals among the 15 students who received research support from the Friends of Long Marine Lab Student Research Awards this year. The Global Oceans Awards were established in 2004 to recognize individuals who make outstanding contributions to the understanding and conservation of our oceans. The event, hosted by the Bittersweet Bistro in Rio Del Mar, is a benefit to support the education programs of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at Long Marine Laboratory. For more information about the Global Oceans Awards Gala, contact Lisa M. Rose at (831) 459-3694.
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