UB technology wins two prestigious R&D 100 Awards

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo has been awarded two 2026 R&D 100 Awards for developing technology that measures the amount of recycled plastic content in commercial products.

Widely recognized as the “Oscars of Innovation,” The R&D 100 Awards are presented annually by R&D World Magazine. They recognize the 100 most innovative technologies from industry, academia and government-sponsored research during the past year.

UB’s innovation combines several sensing techniques – triboelectric analysis, dielectric and impedance spectroscopy, capacitance measurement, and mid-infrared spectroscopy – with machine learning.

The method aims to help companies, regulatory agencies and other organizations better monitor the percentage of recycled plastic content contained in plastic products. Doing so can help reduce the need for new plastic and help curb plastic pollution, which aligns with environmental and sustainable-development goals of the United Nations and other agencies.

In addition to the R&D 100 Award, the technology was one of three projects recognized for an R&D 100 Special Recognition: Corporate Social Responsibility Award. These are first R&D 100 Awards awarded to a sitting UB faculty member.

“By fabricating such a device, we hope to enable widespread, real-time monitoring of recycled plastics in commercial products, essentially taking the technology from low technology readiness levels (TRL’s) related to fundamental science and translating it across to high TRL levels for commercialization,” says project leader Amit Goyal, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the UB Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Goyal directs the UB Initiative on Plastics Recycling and Innovation, which is designated as a New York State Center for Plastics Recycling Research and Innovation by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

The method was first described in March in a Nature Communications Engineering paper titled, “Determining the percentage of recycled plastic content in a plastic product.”

Additional UB faculty contributors include Thomas Thundant, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the UB Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the UB RENEW Institute; and Karthik Dantu, PhD, associate professor in Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Additional co-authors include Yaoli Zhao, PhD, Charuvahan “Charu” Adhivarahan, PhD, Chandra Lekha Jyothula, and Kunal Singh, PhD.

The second award for corporate social responsibility honors technologies and organizational efforts targeting sustainability and social good.

UB recently filed an international Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application, a single international filing managed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on the technology based on a provisional PCT application filed in 2025.

Goyal says the team’s future work will involve combining the method's sensing techniques and machine learning model into a portable device. A second follow-up paper based on this technology, including additives, is being finalized and will be submitted for publication soon, Goyal says.

Prior to being recruited to UB in 2015, Goyal has received 11 R&D 100 Awards comprised of ten R&D 100 awards for distinct inventions and technologies, and the 2010 R&D 100 Innovator-of-the-Year Award, which is for lifetime innovations and contributions.

The New York State Center for Plastics Recycling Research and Innovation at UB provided funding for research into the technology. The center is supported by a grant from New York State Environmental Protection Fund, administered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Adhivarahan and Dantu were partially supported by a gift from MOOG Inc.

The awards will be formally presented at a R&D 100 Awards Banquet in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Nov. 19, in a formal black-tie event that gathers global researchers, developers and industry leaders for networking, a celebratory dinner and professional award presentations.