Gather your friends and neighbors for a fun day in the fresh air as we clean up local streams and open spaces across central PA! Last year 550 volunteers prevented 6,320 pounds of trash from entering our waterways across 57 sites, and you can help make 2025 the most successful yet.
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.
Franklin M. Orr, Jr., Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor Emeritus in the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at Stanford University, will give the 2025 G. Albert Shoemaker Lecture in Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State. His talk, “Transforming Global Energy Systems to Mitigate Climate Change,” will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, April 11, in 22 Deike Building at Penn State University Park and online via Zoom. A reception will precede the lecture at 3:00 p.m. in the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery. The event is free and open to the public.
Dr. Glen Hood is an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University (Detroit, MI) in the Department of Biological Sciences. The Hood Lab is broadly interested in the ecology and evolutionary biology of multi-trophic interactions between plants, insects, and parasites, with a focus on the evolution of new species. While Dr. Hood studies a diversity of plant-insect-parasite systems, much of his research focuses on insect-induced plant galls. In this regard, Dr.
Seminar: Meta-omic Analyses of Switchgrass-Fed Anaerobic Digesters for Lignocellulose-Derived Bioenergy and BioproductsMicrobiome CenterJay Regan, Penn State Civil and Environmental Engineering
This two-day symposium brings together experts from Penn State University, Howard University, and Morgan State University to advance interdisciplinary solutions for a sustainable future.
Join Penn State CTSI’s Science Communication Workshop. This session will cover:Overview of Science CommunicationPresenting Results with VisualizationMastering the Media: How to Communicate Your Research with Clarity and ConfidenceGuest presenters include:
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is organizing the Donald R.F. Harleman Honorary Lecture in Water Resources Engineering on Thursday, April 10, from 4:30 to 6:00 PM in 202 ECoRE Building.The speaker is Dr. Bilal Ayyub from the University of Maryland. The title of his presentation is “Sustainable Climate-Resilient Infrastructure: Opportunities and Challenges.”
Rahman Azari, associate professor of architecture in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School, will discuss his book, “The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Carbon in the Built Environment," with B. Stephen Carpenter II, Michael J. and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Dean in the College of Arts and Architecture, at 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 10, at the Woskob Family Gallery, located at 146 S. Allen St., State College.
The 2025 David Ford McFarland Award Lecture for Achievement in Metallurgy will be held at 3:05 p.m. on Thursday, April 10, in 101 Agricultural Sciences and Industries Building on Penn State's University Park campus. Rose Hernandez, science program director at the International Space Station National Laboratory, will deliver the lecture, “From Earth to Space: Advancing Materials Technologies and Embracing Life's Mission.”
In the 2025 spring semester, SAFES will host a series of talks to highlight Penn State's ongoing PFAS research/extension efforts and analytical lab capacity.
Dr. Sneha Akhade currently serves as the Hydrogen Lead at the Laboratory for Energy Applications for the Future (LEAF) and is a Staff Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Akhade earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 2016 and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2011 and held a prior postdoctoral position at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. At LLNL, Dr.
Introduced earthworms have spread across North America, reshaping ecosystems and threatening native plant and wildlife species. In this webinar, Katalin Szlavecz explores the ecological roles of earthworms in forest ecosystems, the first and second waves of earthworm invasion, and their profound impact on below-ground processes. She will discuss how these invasions have drastically altered both soil dynamics and aboveground biodiversity, providing key insights into the ongoing ecological shifts driven by nonnative earthworms.Who is this for?
This two-day symposium brings together experts from Penn State University, Howard University, and Morgan State University to advance interdisciplinary solutions for a sustainable future.
Music and text by David LangVideo design by Tal RosnerPerformed by Bang on a Can All-StarsWith Penn State Concert Choir under the direction of Dr. Christopher Kiver7:30 pm Wednesday, April 9, 2025Eisenhower AuditoriumDavid Lang’s “before and after nature” is a meditation on the natural world, both before human existence and after humans are gone. The program features Lang’s music and text; video design by Tal Rosner; and is performed by Bang on a Can All-Stars, with the Penn State Concert Choir under the direction of Dr. Christopher Kiver.
For 2025's annual Colloquium on the Environment, Penn State Sustainability is excited to welcome sociologist, scholar, and author Eric Klinenberg. His latest work looks at the COVID pandemic and other social crises and examines the sociological factors that contributed to better outcomes, highlighting the importance of social capital and social networks in keeping us healthy, happy, and better adapted to cope with disasters.
Mesoscale Convective Systems (MCSs) are understood to produce a variety of gravity waves throughout their convective lifecycle. These waves can range from high to low frequencies depending on the properties of their generating mechanism. A wave’s frequency subsequently determines its angle of propagation away from the MCS, impacting its effect on the surrounding environment or the MCS itself. Low-frequency waves can spend the largest amount of time in the troposphere and thus are able to have a significant impact on the MCS and its environment.
Recently, advances in machine learning, hardware (e.g. GPUs/TPUs), and availability of high-quality data have set the stage for machine learning (ML) to tackle problems for weather and climate. This has led to a paradigm shift in operational weather forecasting, most evidently seen by the vast amount of resources being invested into AI models at the leading operational centers including NOAA, ECMWF, and others.
A large environmental justice literature suggests that the siting of highly emitting industrial plants has historically generated inequities in exposure, often on the basis of race and socioeconomic status. Economically disadvantaged and minority communities have long experienced higher environmental disamenities, resulting in health and economic consequences. This means that policies targeting emissions reductions may disproportionately benefit disadvantaged communities, potentially reducing environmental injustices.
Meryl Mims is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech and an affiliated faculty member with Virginia Tech's Global Change Center and Invasive Species Collaborative. Meryl received her PhD from the University of Washington in 2015 and held a postdoctoral fellowship with the U.S. Geological Survey before joining the faculty at Virginia Tech. Along with members of her lab, Meryl studies how species' traits interact with the environment to influence populations and communities of organisms and their vulnerability to climate change.
Ancient Greek philosophers valued a virtue called phronesis or “practical wisdom,” which involves doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason. It is the conceptual counterpoint to a form of apathy known as akrasia, or knowing what's right, but not doing it. In my recent book, Peace by Peace: Risking Public Action, Creating Social Change, I explore these dynamics and in this lively ten-minute talk will share some insight on how to operationalize practical wisdom in your everyday life.