Department of Geosciences Colloquium Series Spring 2026 Joel Rowland Los Alamos National Laboratory Host: Anastasia Piliouras(Rescheduled from January 27)
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.
This talk will overview recent research on human tendency to over-trust and under-trust AI. It will describe the role played by cognitive heuristics (or mental shortcuts) in shaping user perceptions, with a particular focus on machine heuristic. With data from experiments comparing human and AI sources and gatekeepers, it will delineate the effect of both positive and negative machine heuristics upon user trust. Finally, it will suggest ways to mitigate the effect of heuristics and achieve better trust calibration.
Breakthrough research doesn’t change the world if no one hears about it. The Researcher to Rockstar initiative helps Penn State researchers learn how to communicate their discoveries, connect with industry and collaborators, and expand the reach of their work beyond traditional academic channels. In this short talk, we’ll share how researchers can amplify their impact without becoming full-time marketers (and offering Penn State resources to help amplify your message).
The geographic extent and intensity of Indigenous land use in eastern US forests prior to European-American settlement remains debated. Some argue that Indigenous forest management was minimal and local-scale, but others argue that their impacts via agricultural clearance and cultural burning were considerable and regional. This talk covers the use of historical land survey records for assessing the geographic extent of Indigenous land use.
Adequately feeding its population may be society's most basic obligation, yet it is one that remains unmet based on UN statistics that show 673 million people faced hunger in 2024 and 2.6 billion could not afford a healthy diet. Feeding a growing and wealthier world population is likely to become more difficult in the face of climate change, pest resistance to traditional treatments, a slowdown in agricultural productivity growth, increased use of agricultural products to produce biofuels, and support for production methods known to reduce yields, such as organic and non-GMO.
National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) is one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s 17 national laboratories and located in Golden, Colorado. NLR’s Building Technologies and Science Center (BTSC) is a leader in cutting edge building science including high-performing buildings, energy modeling, building stock modeling, industrial construction innovation, technology innovation, and industry engagement.
2026 Women Advancing River Research Seminar SeriesWater at the Top of the WorldJoanmarie Del Vecchio, College of William & Mary, United States Anastasia Piliouras, Penn State, United States
The creation of treatment systems capable of removing contaminants from water has been one of the most impactful achievements of environmental engineers. Because regulations usually assume uniform temporal performance and water infrastructure tends to be built in places where space is limited, the technologies used in modern treatment plants usually consist of mechanical devices (i.e., unit processes) for which conditions are rigorously controlled. In contrast, nature-based treatment systems employ physical, chemical and biological processes to improve water quality in larger spaces.
Laura Ingalls Wilder wasn’t an official weather observer. She simply paid attention. Her life and livelihood intertwined with the weather and climate around her, inseparable. Wilder Weather reveals the accuracy of the vivid, detailed weather descriptions in her fictional Little House books—stories of blizzards and prairie fires, tornadoes and grasshoppers, floods and droughts.
Renewable diesel is a hydroprocessed, drop-in replacement for petroleum diesel. It accounted for less than 1% of California's diesel pool in 2011 but exceeded two-thirds by 2024, driven by the state's Low Carbon Fuel Standard and federal renewable fuel incentives. Dr. Lade used hourly traffic flow and roadside air quality monitor data alongside satellite NO₂ measurements from 2016 through 2024 to estimate whether this transformation has produced detectable changes in nitrogen oxide (NOx) concentrations along California's highway corridors.
The PSU PIE Initiative hosts Professor Christopher Kennedy, University of Victoria, presenting "Transitioning Metabolism."
Long-term power grid planning increasingly accounts for the rising frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and their impacts on load, fuel availability, operational constraints, and infrastructure vulnerability. Whether these considerations are incorporated directly into capacity expansion models or evaluated later through unit commitment and economic dispatch simulations, robust impact datasets are essential to inform the analysis.
This session will showcase practical classroom implementations and spark ideas for your own courses.Speakers & Topics
"Bridging Continents, Powering Futures: Accelerating Sustainable Energy Materials Discovery through AI and African-European Research Partnerships” presents a vision for advancing sustainable energy through both technological innovation and global collaboration. The talk first highlights the urgent need to accelerate the discovery of next-generation photovoltaic materials such as organic and perovskite solar cells, which traditionally take over a decade to develop. Dr.
Micro- and nanoplastics are recognized as emerging contaminants in the environment, yet uncertainties remain regarding their occurrence, impacts on ecosystem functioning, and environmental fate. In this talk, a sampling framework is presented that links microplastic concentration to soil sample size and spatial heterogeneity, demonstrating how inadequate sampling can bias reported abundances.
Pennsylvania is already experiencing the impacts of climate change, from more frequent extreme weather events to growing risks for infrastructure, agriculture, and public health. In response, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and seven other state agencies partnered with Penn State to establish Prepare PA, a statewide climate resilience network. Built on Penn State’s land‑grant mission and statewide presence, Prepare PA provides communities with access to climate data, technical assistance, education, and peer networks tailored to local needs.
Gold can be assembled into ultra‑small clusters with precisely defined atomic structures, creating what are known as “superatoms”—nanoscale building blocks that behave like individual atoms but with tunable properties. These gold nanoclusters exhibit unusual electronic behavior and strong interactions between electrons and their spins due to gold’s intrinsic properties. As a result, they show exceptionally high levels of spin polarization while remaining stable in liquid solutions, a rare combination.
Guglielmo will present his paper "Demand for crop insurance: Evidence from Pakistan."Abstract
Gretchen Watkins, board director at The Mosaic Company and former president of Shell USA and executive vice president of Global Shales, will give the 2026 G. Albert Shoemaker Lecture in Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State. Her talk, “Leadership challenges in an ever-changing energy landscape,” will be held at 4 p.m. on Friday, April 10, in 22 Deike Building at Penn State University Park. It will also be available online via Zoom. A reception will precede the discussion at 3 p.m. in the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery.
The Geochemistry Forum hosts Jon Schwantes, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, presenting "Isotopes & Nuclear Security: Methods Borrowed from Isotope Geochemistry Form the Basis for Nuclear Event Monitoring."