13 Pitt people and teams won 2026 Sustainability Awards

The University of Pittsburgh honored students, faculty, staff and groups at its 2026 Pitt Sustainability Awards ceremony on April 24. The annual event recognizes members of the Pitt community whose work advances the goals of the Pitt Sustainability Plan.

The plan organizes Pitt’s sustainability work across three areas: stewardship, exploration, and community and culture. The general Pitt Sustainability Awards celebrate Pitt faculty, staff, students and groups who make extraordinary impacts on campus sustainability.

The Erika Ninos Student Leadership Award recognizes one Pitt student annually who has demonstrated exemplary leadership and dedication to advancing sustainability. This year’s winner is Rachel Garcia (pictured, second from right), a recent graduate of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences who served as managing student director of the Student Office of Sustainability and co-chaired the Zero Waste Working Group. After graduation, she will pursue an environmental law degree at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

This year’s ceremony added two new honors: the Regional Campus Awards — recognizing students, faculty and staff at the University’s Johnstown, Bradford, Greensburg and Titusville campuses — and the Innovation Award.

The Innovation Award honors a project or effort that has creatively advanced sustainability on campus through an innovative solution or partnership. This year’s recipient is the Public Health Resource Hub Project, led by Jody Mich-Basso and Kim Renziehausen. The pair turned a room in the Public Health Building into a centralized collection space for hard-to-recycle items like single-use coffee pods, office supplies and expired lab supplies, creating a model Pitt hopes to replicate across campus.

Additional awardees include:

• Student Awards: Nathan Schneider, PhD candidate in the Center for Neuroscience; Cassidy Laffey, a senior in the Swanson School of Engineering; Mare McGrory, a senior in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
• Faculty Awards: Stephanie Maximous, assistant professor and director of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Program in the School of Medicine; Ian Nettleship, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science in the Swanson School of Engineering
• Staff Awards: Debbie Harrington, senior research coordinator in the Rehab Neural Engineering Lab; Adam Wilson, surplus inventory lead
• Regional Campus Awards: Matt Kropf, associate professor of engineering technology and director of the Energy Institute at Pitt-Bradford; Manisha Nigam, professor of chemistry at Pitt-Johnstown; Silvina Orsatti, assistant professor of Spanish at Pitt-Greensburg
• Group Award: PLA Injection Molding Club

See the full list and bios of award winners, including the 2026 Student Sustainability Champions, and check out more photos from the event.

Photography by John Altdofer