American University of Sharjah Professor Steve Griffiths, Vice Chancellor for Research, has been named the UAE National Champion in the fourth edition of the Frontiers Planet Prize. The selection marks the UAE’s debut in the global competition, which recognises excellence in research regarding planetary boundaries.
Chosen by an independent jury of 100 experts, Dr. Griffiths has been honored for a landmark study published in Nature Reviews Chemistry that assesses chemical innovations required to scale carbon capture technologies across diverse industrial settings.
The UAE National Champion award recognises Dr Griffiths and his co-authors for a landmark study on carbon capture technologies, published in Nature Reviews Chemistry, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals.
The research was conducted in collaboration with a team led by Dr Griffiths and Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer, Champion and Director of the Industrial Decarbonization Research and Innovation Center and Director of the Research Center for Carbon Solutions at Heriot-Watt University, along with Professor John M.
Andresen and Dr Jeannie Ziang Yie Tan at Heriot-Watt University, and João M. Uratani of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex.
The paper assesses the chemical innovations needed to deploy carbon capture at scale, given that industrial exhaust gases vary considerably in CO₂ concentration, temperature and pressure. “The emissions-intensive, or hard-to-abate, industries such as cement, steel and chemicals directly account for roughly 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and 85 percent of manufacturing emissions worldwide.
These emissions cannot be readily mitigated by energy efficiency and electrification coupled with renewable electricity alone,” said Dr. Griffiths. “Our research evaluates five families of carbon capture technology at or beyond the prototype stage to give industry and policymakers a clear, evidence-based picture of what works, where, and how close they are to deployment.
Advancing these technologies is critical if we are serious about ever achieving net-zero emissions,” he added. This recognition highlights the expanding international impact of AUS research and its alignment with both regional and global sustainability agendas.
The study’s findings have also been integrated into a policy report developed with the United Nations University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Dr. Griffiths, whose win was announced on Earth Day 2026, will present his work at the Frontiers Planet Prize Award Ceremony in Davos in January 2027 and remains a contender for the competition’s million-dollar international prize.
