Terry Collins, a Carnegie Mellon University researcher, is more than a bit bullish on ways green chemistry can protect the environment by obliterating harmful substances.

If there's any doubt about his feelings, check out the YouTube video in which the chemistry professor expounds on the virtues of this emerging field. The viral advertising message and the special Web page linking to it are among the ways Pittsburgh universities are telling the influx of international visitors for the Group of 20 Summit that prominent research is happening here.

Just as Pittsburgh views the summit as an opportunity to market itself on the world stage, the region's universities have not been shy about recounting their role -- and that of the region's medical sector -- in transforming a once-smoky steel town into a knowledge center.

Green science is merely one example.

"We're in this really wonderful space of knowing that we have solutions to real world problems," Dr. Collins says in describing a process to purify water.

All month long, the campuses have hosted symposiums and other summit-related events, while rolling out special lists of media experts able to be quoted on topics from globalization and global warming to Pittsburgh's renaissance.

Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center invited G-20 delegations and media to hour-long tours yesterday of a dozen sites devoted to regenerative medicine, robotics, entertainment technology and other scientific pursuits.

"The success of the Pittsburgh region's economy, even in the face of the worldwide downturn, has largely, and correctly, been attributed to the strength of Pittsburgh's powerful education and medical sector," boasts one G-20 Web site, www.edsmedspittsburgh.org. a joint effort of Pitt, Carnegie Mellon and UPMC.

The site calls those three institutions the "most powerful of the eds and meds" in the region.

Meanwhile, faculty there and at the region's other colleges have worked summit-related discussions into their classes.

At Chatham University, associate professor Charlotte Lott wants students in her intermediate macroeconomics class to consider policies that could right the world's economy. Students in a first-year seminar she teaches are making presentations about economic and other characteristics of the participating G-20 nations.

Those assignments could as easily be tackled if the summit were a continent away. But the fact it will unfold in Pittsburgh adds immediacy to the meetings and to related issues of peace and social justice.

"It's like this magnificent teaching moment," said LaRoche College history professor Paul Le Blanc.

Students in his sociology of work and occupations class were asked to attend at least two hours of the People's Summit, a three-day dialogue on economic, social and political problems being held in the city through today.

"I'm not interested in proselytizing," Dr. Le Blanc said. "I want students to be able to engage with the discussions, hear different opinions, gather information and develop their own points of view."

At Carnegie Mellon, professor Jendayi Frazer's class in diplomacy and statecraft is touching on ways economic integration affects sovereignty and state power.

In some classes, even the protests are up for study. Though no one is being asked to don a gas mask for college credit, the confrontations -- and the way media portrays them -- will be a topic in the classroom.

Roger Rouse, an associate teaching professor in history at Carnegie Mellon, will explore those points along with social movements and the summit itself in his experiencing globalization course.

He said it's an opportunity to examine globalization's various impacts. What is it like to be a coffee grower in Guatemala, for instance, or a factory worker in China? Students will consider whether, and in what form, protests against the G-20 meeting are appropriate.

"The idea is to introduce students to some of the debates before the event happens so their antennas will be up," he said.

In one local venue, a summit-related theme is being expressed as art.

Through Oct. 10, visitors to The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Downtown, can view the work of students involved in a poster exchange that is part of the U.S. debut of "Hot Spots: What comes after Oil?" Students from the institute and from The American University in Dubai and Zayed University in United Arab Emirates are taking part in the artistic dialogue by designing colorful expressions of a world beyond fuel dependency.

A special welcome reception and showing are planned today for G-20 delegates and the international media. Openings of "Hot Spots" also are planned in Dubai this month and in Germany in January.

Organizers say young people have a particular stake, so their views are especially relevant.

"They're the future," said Ann Rosenthal, an instructor at the Pittsburgh institute. "They are the ones who will inherit these issues."

Though much of what the universities are showcasing involves futuristic technology and research, one destination getting attention at Pitt is the decades-old Cathedral of Learning, a 42-story Indiana limestone landmark completed in 1937.

At 535 feet tall, it is the second tallest education building in the world and -- perhaps most famously -- houses Pitt's 27 Nationality classrooms.

The rooms bear designs of various countries, including a number of G-20 nations. Over the years, the rooms have drawn celebrities and world figures, including the wife of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

The summit's start on Thursday coincidentally marks the 50th anniversary of Mrs. Khrushchev's tour of the rooms in 1959.

If a head of state or spouse manages to slip away from the G-20 for a tour of the rooms, that would be great, said E. Maxine Bruhns, who directs the Nationality Rooms program.

Even if that does not happen, she said, the rooms will have attracted delegations from a number of countries and media outlets from as far away as Korea and Japan. "We're getting darn good publicity."