White House adviser tours Golisano Institute for Sustainability

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Kevin Fuller

Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, gets a tour Sept. 9 of the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies at Rochester Institute of Technology from Nabil Nasr, director of Golisano Institute for Sustainability. Sutley serves as the principal environmental policy adviser to President Barack Obama. Sutley toured the facilities to get an idea of how Golisano Insitute for Sustainability is shaping sustainable manufacturing in America.

RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability is drawing the interest of the White House due to its environmental efforts in manufacturing.

As part of several stops in western New York, Nancy Sutley, President Barack Obama’s senior environmental adviser and chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, recently toured the facility at RIT.

“We want people to see the exciting work we are doing here at Golisano Institute for Sustainability,” says Nabil Nasr, director of Golisano Institute for Sustainability. “Nancy Sutley visiting our facilities is a way for us to show the White House the incredible things we are doing in education, technology development and technology transfer in the emerging field of sustainability science.”

Nasr, accompanied by several faculty and staff members at Golisano Institute for Sustainability and New York State Pollution Prevention Institute, toured the facilities alongside Sutley.

Next fall, Golisano Institute for Sustainability will open its doors to a new state-of-the-art facility that will house a world-class living laboratory. The building is on track for LEED Platinum and will use 40 percent less energy than any comparable building.

The institute has partnered with the federal government in creating a sustainable manufacturing toolkit, which will be used as a model for businesses. It has also committed to sharing the model of sustainability education with five partner universities in developing countries around the world as part of the Clinton Global Initiative.

The Golisano Institute has formed in 2007 thanks to a $10 million gift from Paychex founder and chairman B. Thomas Golisano. It currently houses one of the world’s first Ph.D. programs in sustainability, as well as master’s degrees in sustainable systems and sustainable architecture. The institute conducts research in nanotechnology, alternative-energy development and validation, sustainable design and pollution prevention.