Todd Usher, founder and CEO of Addison Homes and director of Clemson University’s Master of Real Estate Development program, will deliver the 2026 Hankin Distinguished Lecture, hosted by the residential construction program and the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center, which is housed in Penn State’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His talk, "Building Better, Doing Better: A Model for Client Delight" will be held at 4 p.m. on Nov. 11 in Robb Hall in the Hintz Family Alumni Center at University Park. A reception will follow the free, public event.
Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive
You're viewing an archived collection of past energy and environment events from around Penn State and beyond. Please visit our Event Calendar to view current and upcoming events.
Learning to read is a foundational skill, yet fewer than one in three US fourth graders read at a proficient level. How best to teach reading and how to improve educational attainment has been the subject of an active policy debate for decades. Some argue for unrestricted funding increases, while others support more targeted changes to specific pedagogy.
This webinar will introduce the Prepare PA network to one of our signature initiatives: Penn State’s Local Climate Action Program (LCAP). This immersive workforce development program pairs upper-level undergraduate and graduate students with municipalities and counties in Pennsylvania to develop greenhouse gas inventories and support climate action planning in a community-led and place-based way. LCAP’s co-director, Dr.
Generative Artificial Intelligence applied language models that follow the existing pattern of thoughts and solutions.“Without changing our pattern of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought.” – Albert Einstein
The change in the design of data centers has been rapid and extensive. Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) has gone from a new idea in 2023 to standard design. The design and deployment of hyperscale projects have proceeded using cooling technology from 2008. A roof full of air-cooled chillers. A hybrid solution is needed. The deployment of AI has created design issues that never need to be addressed prior. The swings in AI power requirements range from idle to 100% and back to idle in seconds plays havoc with Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) systems.
Join Sustain Penn State for its Sustainability Showcase Series featuring environmental justice activist Kevin Patel. Patel’s keynote talk will be Tuesday, November 10, 4:00 p.m. (EST) in 112 Kern and streamed online. The event is free and open to all; pre-registration for online attendance is required.
Department of Geosciences Colloquium Series Fall 2026Charles BoukaréYork UniversityHost: Brad Foley
Join the Smeal Sustainable Business Center for a Lunch and Learn with Sarah Robinson Enaharo, a GreenBiz 30 Under 30 honoree (2017) and sustainability leader now building a new venture. Sarah has led sustainability work at flooring manufacturer Tarkett before becoming Global Sustainability Director at Milliken & Company, where she focused on circular economy, material health, and healthy buildings.
Lost files, broken access, undocumented datasets, and simple handling errors can quickly turn into lost time, lost research, or even lost funding. At the same time, expectations from funders and regulators around data management, public access, and security are changing. This talk will explore what these changes mean for researchers, practical ways research groups can reduce risk, and how Penn State units are working together to make good data management easier.
I will present two ideas driving my current research on food waste mitigation: food rescue and choice architecture. With approximately one-third of all food produced going to waste, the environmental and societal consequences are substantial, particularly given the connection between food waste and food insecurity. Addressing this challenge offers significant opportunities for interdisciplinary research, and I hope this talk will spark conversation and new collaborations.
Gather with Philadelphia’s climate resilience community for an evening of networking, good food, and panoramic city views. Hosted in partnership with Green Building United, this event will bring together people from across the region and diverse sectors—higher education, government, industry, and community organizations—who are committed to building a more resilient Pennsylvania.
Large-scale solar development has made significant progress in reducing its impacts on land during construction, but effective stormwater and runoff management remains an important consideration. Join Penn State Extension and Lauren McPhillips, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State, to examine how stormwater and runoff can be effectively managed at large-scale solar sites.
The Geochemistry Forum hosts Elizabeth Hajek presenting "Geochemistry Forum: Separating climate and tectonic signals in the sedimentary record of active margins."
Join SAFES on Friday, November 6, 2026, in 252 Food Science Building for a day of talks, discussion, and brainstorming about research in Applied Evolution at Penn State. Breakfast will begin at 8:30 am and end at 3 pm. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.Graduate students, postdocs, and faculty are all encouraged to present! Sessions will be organized in three areas: biodiversity conservation, resilient agriculture, and animal/human health and medicine, and they will include long (10 minutes) and lightning (3 minutes) talks.
This presentation explores Modelica-based modeling of variable-air-volume (VAV) systems, covering air handling units, VAV boxes, and their associated controls. Key modeling objectives, techniques, and challenges are highlighted, followed by applications of the models to advanced control and contaminant mitigation studies.The presentation closes with major conclusions, limitations, and directions for future work.
Buildings can achieve indoor environmental objectives, such as improving indoor air quality (IAQ) or maintaining thermal conditions, by modifying heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system operation or implementing air cleaning systems, which both affect energy use. System-level modeling can support the analysis of these trade-offs, with advances in physics-based methods providing detailed representation of key physics and novel artificial intelligence (AI) methods accelerating computationally demanding aspects.
Join us in University Park for an interdisciplinary symposium of engineers, architects, scientists, educators, activists, citizens, and civic leaders in a candid and thought-provoking confrontation of issues surrounding AI and data centers. Network with experts across fields. Breakfast and lunch will be provided; no cost to attend.
Extreme rainfall drives some of the most damaging weather hazards, from flash floods to inland flooding from tropical cyclones, yet it remains among the hardest quantities to forecast. This seminar explores recent advances in data assimilation and numerical weather prediction aimed at this challenge. First, I will show results from a new study using four-dimensional hybrid-ensemble variational (4DEnVar) methods in the MPAS-JEDI framework.
Join fellow industry leaders, researchers, students, and faculty for a dynamic day of discovery, collaboration, and innovation. This year’s refreshed format is designed to spark new ideas and connections through engaging, hands-on experiences. What's in store:
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