Year: 2025
Type: editorial
Abstract: Recommendations H ow do we realize inspiration leading to innovation?Perhaps our inspiration flows from interactions with nature, or family, friends, or neighbors and then is fueled by our curiosity.Our individual passions inherently provide a wellspring of inspiration, particularly when we consider the complex challenges facing our shared home and so many opportunities to improve the human condition and protect ecosystem integrity.Our community has faced many challenges this year.Though negativity can impact creativity, leading to decreases in productivity, purpose-driven research is routinely embraced across environmental science, engineering, and health pursuits.After all, as Plato famously wrote in Republic, "our need will be the real creator", or the more common saying that "necessity is the mother of invention".Each member of our global environmental science and technology community possesses individual life experiences and perspectives, yet our combined contributions present evidence of the collective inspirational fuel yielding innovation for our shared benefit.Perhaps now more than ever we must redouble our efforts to encourage and celebrate the creative inspiration of our early career colleagues as they design, develop, and deliver more sustainable innovation for people and the planet.Named in honor of the first Editor-in-Chief of ES&T, the James J. Morgan Early Career Award is given each year by ES&T, ES&T Letters, and the Environmental Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) to recognize early career colleagues who are moving environmental science and technology forward in new and innovative ways.This year we received an extraordinarily large nomination pool of high-caliber scientists from the Asia Pacific region.The four award winners chosen for 2026, along with nine other colleagues who are receiving an honorary mention this year, clearly represent the inspiring ingenuity and innovation of the upcoming early career cohort from this dynamic region who are thinking creatively and providing solutions to global challenges across the diverse scope of ES&T and ES&T Letters.
Authors: Bryan W. Brooks, Julie B. Zimmerman
Institutions: Baylor University, Yale University
Language: English
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4416901644