Living with Water presented by Roberto Fernandez.This is part of a seminar series hosted by the TRAIN center through the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute on Computational Frontiers in Multi-Hazard Forecasting and Risk Assessment.
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.
The guest speech offers a scoping review of the field of AI ethics and provides participants with the necessary tools to identify and address ethical and social challenges related to AI. It introduces inclusive definitions of AI, clarifies two distinct senses of ethics, and presents a framework for identifying ethical concerns throughout the AI lifecycle. The talk envisions aspiring engineers as both users and developers of AI. It will incorporate interactive components and cultivate a critical awareness of how AI impacts both our daily lives and work.
Exposure to air pollution and take-up of defensive investments vary widely by socioeconomic status. Public benefit programs, such as subsidized air purifiers, can address these disparities, but administrative “ordeal” costs may screen out the very households they target. We conduct a randomized controlled trial with approximately 90,000 California households, mailing letters inviting residents to apply for a subsidized portable air purifier, while experimentally varying the subsidy rate (0–100%) and ordeal costs (a longer application form and a proof-of-residence requirement).
Abstract: Critical infrastructure control systems (CIS), such as energy, transportation, and manufacturing, are expected to operate safely despite uncertain environments, unexpected failures, cyberattacks, and AI-enabled decision-making. Although modern control and verification techniques can provide safety guarantees, these guarantees are only as reliable as the assumptions on which they are built. In this talk, we focus on three questions: (1) How safe is a system when its environment deviates from the assumptions used during design?
Extensive work has advanced our ability to forecast tropical cyclone (TC) track and intensity, yet the rate of improvement for intensity has been slower than that for track. Both external factors and internal processes affect TC intensity change, and more intense TCs often cause greater impacts, thus considerable effort has been directed toward studying TC intensification. Less research has examined the other end of the intensity change spectrum—that of weakening—as typical "ingredients" include lower sea surface temperatures (SSTs), dry air, and increasing vertical wind shear.
Department of Geosciences Colloquium Series Fall 2026Sora KimUniversity of California, MercedHost: Isabel Fendley
In this talk, I will explain how we are using machine learning to improve materials synthesis using concrete examples and by making an analogy to chocolate chip cookie baking. In addition to describing our scientific efforts, I will also give a brief overview of our DOE Genesis project and how the Genesis program is operating.The Millennium Café runs from 10-11 am in the 3rd-floor Café Commons of the Millennium Science Complex building. Join researchers from across campus for a stellar cup of coffee and two < 10-minute interdisciplinary talks.
Artificial intelligence is transforming science and society, but it is also driving unprecedented growth in the energy needed to power data centers. In this talk, I will show how physics-based digital twins help us understand and optimize these complex systems, and how they provide the foundation for the next generation of Physical AI.
The phyllosphere harbors diverse microbial communities that play a crucial role in maintaining plant health and defending against diseases, yet our ability to experimentally manipulate these communities and harness their disease-suppressive potential remains limited. My research investigates how phyllosphere microbiomes can be studied, selected, and ultimately translated toward sustainable disease management in tomatoes. First, I developed a controlled plant growth system that enables manipulation of phyllosphere microbial communities under axenic and holoxenic conditions.
Restoring the American elm (Ulmus americana) requires overcoming the high cost and slow timeline of traditional Dutch elm disease (DED) screening, which relies on destructive sampling and late-stage symptom observation. The work presented in this talk will discuss how early, pre-symptomatic physiological, metabolic, and molecular responses across tolerant and susceptible genotypes could potentially be used as a DED-tolerance phenotyping tool.
The Penn State Climate Consortium will host a series of fall events examining some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities associated with a changing climate.
The Geochemistry Forum hosts Joe Cotruvo, Professor of Chemistry, presenting on "Selective recognition of lanthanides in biology."
Earthquake-induced soil liquefaction assessment commonly relies on simplified models that assume fully saturated, relatively homogeneous soil profiles. Recent investigations in Napier, Aotearoa New Zealand, highlight important limitations of this approach.
Distressed communities facing industrial decline or energy transitions often inherit environmental hazards. Using coal communities as a test case, we consider whether turning environmental hazards into amenities helps revitalize communities threatened with economic and demographic decline. Looking over three decades, we find that coal communities with mine-impaired waterways had much less population growth than similar communities nearby, leading to depopulation for many.
EME Seminar Series presents Jay Apt, Carnegie Mellon University, discussing Energy Systems, Sustainability & Decision Making
SSRI welcomes all Penn State faculty, post-docs, and staff interested in the social and behavioral sciences to learn how SSRI can support you and your research. Please join us for an ice cream social including a brief introduction to the SSRI community and the opportunity to learn about our various research units. Please register.
In this talk, we present an importance-driven cross-layer design for semantic communication and networking. Building on statistical decision theory, we introduce an information-theoretic measure of per-sample data importance that quantifies the task-specific value of each data sample. Specifically, the importance, or value, of each data sample is characterized by the reduction in task-specific loss achieved by observing that sample.
Mitochondria are dynamic and complex organelles that play a central role in all aspects of biology, including energy production, intermediary metabolism, and apoptosis. These broad cellular functions also place mitochondria as a central player in human health and disease. We have focused over the past several years on deciphering the biochemical and cellular functions of conserved uncharacterized mitochondrial proteins.
2026 Women Advancing River Research Seminar SeriesConnecting Sources, Solutes, and Metabolism to Characterize Urban Stream Biogeochemistry Devon Kerins, University College Dublin, IrelandEugenia Marti, Centre d’Estudis Avancats de Blanes, Spain
Wildfires are an increasingly important challenge for Pennsylvania's people, infrastructure, and natural resources. This seminar highlights how GIS and geospatial technologies are helping agencies better understand wildfire risk, coordinate response efforts, and guide actions. Hear from leaders with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry and the Pennsylvania Game Commission as they discuss current wildfire trends, collaborative strategies, and the power of mapping to support informed decision-making.