Jentoft Receives 2025-2026 Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship

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This story was first published by the UMass News Office.

The Office of Research and Engagement has announced the three recipients of the 2025-2026 Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship. The Conti Fellowship recognizes the exceptional quality and significance of a faculty member’s accomplishments in research and creative endeavors at UMass Amherst and their potential for continuing excellence, particularly with respect to the project that they propose to undertake during the fellowship.

One of the recipients is Friederike Jentoft, professor of chemical engineering.

Jentoft conducts fundamental research to understand how catalysts, which are materials that accelerate chemical reactions without being transformed during the reaction, do their job of breaking and making chemical bonds. Catalysts are critical for many applications, including production of fuels, chemicals, plastics and for purifying waste streams (like the catalytic converter in an automobile), and the use of catalysts is generally beneficial for the environment by lowering energy consumption and reducing waste. The outcome of her research – the fundamental knowledge of how catalysts interact with molecules – serves to develop and improve catalytic materials and processes.

Her references praised her work, writing that “Professor Jentoft is an internationally renowned leader in the field of catalysis with a record of outstanding, broadly recognized, and high impact research accomplishments. Since joining UMass in 2015, she has established a world-class research program on the design and use of chemicals that stimulate reactions to generate specific byproducts. Professor Jentoft studies chemical transformations that, among other effects, make carbon-neutral biofuels, reduce carbon dioxide, and clean up chemical waste. These are very important applications with direct and potentially major benefits to our climate, and therefore with substantial broader societal impacts.”

Jentoft has organized the project she will complete as a Conti Fellow into three general areas: improving the sustainable production of monomeric molecules; characterizing the properties of catalytic materials and writing an authoritative review on this subject; and optimizing the transformation of monomeric molecules to plastics. She intends the impact of her research to be both global and local, closing the carbon cycle by using renewable feedstocks mitigates climate change, whereas eliminating hazards and waste streams from chemical processing benefits the often underprivileged communities living in the vicinity of chemical plants.