Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

Municipal planning, socioeconomic factors, and geographic environmental vulnerability are key determinants of a community's livability. Various types of exposure become evident within community functions. Join us to explore how forestry can offer practical solutions to address the challenges faced by individuals and neighborhoods in our community. Attend this one-hour webinar to learn, and networking with like-minded professionals!

Global problems of greatest importance have become existential, cross geography and peoples, and are of such complexity that no one field, agency, country, or foundation can solve them.  Systems solutions to those problems by definition require an unprecedented degree of interdisciplinary collaboration whose routine goal is to achieve goals not achievable within single disciplines.  International universities can become the best social structure in society capable of rising to the challenge of finding systems solutions to global problems.  Participating in those solutions is a moral respons

Penn State’s NSF-supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) will soon invite proposals for a Seed competition that seeks to nucleate interdisciplinary teams in areas of transformative materials research that would be competitive as Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRGs) in the upcoming 2025–26 national MRSEC competition. During the Cafe I will describe the qualities of a successful Seed-IRG. Immediately after the Café (starting at 11a) will be a round table opportunity for anyone interested in further discussion & brainstorming.

In the last century, research on urban systems dynamics has improved our understanding, leading to data-driven tools for effective urban management, including predictive analytics and simulation models. Despite these advances, achieving sustainability goals remains a challenge for cities. The historical focus on system-scale decisions must now consider the influence of urban gradients and their connections to external and internal factors.

Celebrate the excitement of Earth Week and the role agriculture plays in becoming better stewards of the Earth from 1-3 p.m. on Saturday, April 20, at the Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross Student Farm. The event, hosted by the Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross Student Farm, will provide free bus services from the Creamery bus pullout to the farm and back, commencing at 12:45 p.m. The bus will make a loop every 20 minutes.

The realities of climate change and the global need to transition to non-carbon emitting energy generation, distribution, and utilization are creating fundamental national security implications and driving an order-of-magnitude demand increase for a wide array of critical and essential minerals. Significant increases in the production of critical and essential minerals are strategically vital to achieving the desired green energy transition.

Understanding soil health through site assessment and tests, determining future land use, and selecting suitable alternative testing methods will be discussed.

The fields of bioenergy and biorenewables have seen and continue to experience unprecedented growth, as the world seeks to shift its economy to a sustainable, renewable basis. Penn State's Center for Biorenewables works to catalyze this transformation through innovation and education relating to biorenewable food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, materials, and energy.

The EMS Energy Institute presents the 2024 Energy Xchange Seminar Series. This presentation will feature Thandazile Moyo, Assistant Professor of Energy and Mineral Engineering in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, with her presentation titled, "Integrating Sustainability in Minerals and Energy Resource Extraction Education." This event is free and parking is available at the Institute at 4 p.m.

Local governments in Pennsylvania are faced with questions about solar development and what kind of local regulations should be in place. Solar ordinances in Pennsylvania can vary significantly depending on the municipality. However, there are some common themes and considerations that tend to arise in solar ordinances across the state. Join us to hear from a recent study looking at solar ordinances across Pennsylvania so far. Join this free one-hour webinar as we explore common themes and considerations in Pennsylvania's solar ordinances. Who is this for?

2024 Women Advancing River Research Seminar Series All seminars will be presented online live at 11:00 a.m. ET on the third Thursday of each month. Seminar recordings will be posted later. Please register in advance for all talks. "Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Inland Waters: Reach Through Global Scale" Amanda G. DelVecchia, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (U.S.) Taylor Maavara, University of Leeds, (United Kingdom)

The metal fabrication and manufacturing industry is one of the most diverse industrial sectors. The processes inherent to the industry can result in the generation of waste materials, hazardous air pollutants, and volatile organic compounds. In addition, plating and degreasing processes often require metal finishing facilities to treat wastewater prior to leaving the site. This webinar will highlight strategies that manufacturers can employ to reduce energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, the use of hazardous materials, and the pollution generated by their facility.

“What is the weather forecast?” … “Are we going to get a lot of snow?” … “What channel are you on?” … “Do you believe in climate change?” … “I love space!” These are the comments/questions that are all too familiar to a Meteorologist, when often have no relevance to a Meteorologist’s career.  I thought I would fit into one or more of these categories when I first began my career in Meteorology at Penn State, but my skillset and interests took me in many other directions. This talk will cover a smattering of topics on which I have focused over the past decade and a half.

Leveraging the SafeGraph cellphone foot traffic data on recreational visits to 130k sites nationwide, we quantify the extent of avoidance behavior in outdoor recreation in response to wildfire smokes from 2018-2019. By exploring the year-over-year variation in smoke exposure and compare the visits with smoke days to visits without smoke days, our results show that wildfire smoke exposure is negatively associated with recreational visits and dwell times: a one standard deviation increase in weekly smoke exposure results in a 5.52% decrease in weekly visits and total dwell times.

Join the Penn State Climate Consortium for a conversation on building community and unity in climate research at Penn State. The webinar is designed to introduce the Penn State Climate Consortium, including the mission, goals, and overview of the themes. We will also discuss current activities, including the Climate Solutions Symposium and Accelerator. The goal of the webinar is to provide Penn State faculty, staff, and students with a clear understanding of how the Climate Consortium looks to provide crucial support to Penn State climate research.

Grasslands can produce feedstock for biogas production, but how can they play a role in improving the ecosystem of a farm? C-CHANGE: Perennial Grass to Gas - Regenerative Farming Strategy will present recent findings on perennial grasses and their environmental performance. The one-hour webinar is free and will detail grassland ecosystem impacts and making perennial grass to gas a strategy for regenerative farms.   Who is this for? Farmers Developers Energy industry members What will you learn?

While most researchers are familiar with standard “macro” FTIR, Raman, and UV-Vis.  It is less known that the MCL currently maintains instrumentation capable of acquiring high spatial resolution data for all of the aforementioned molecular spectroscopy techniques.  This talk will discuss the applications of AFM-IR (Nano-IR), Micro-FT-IR and Micro-UV-Vis while highlighting the limitations of each techniques as it relates to sample preparation requirements and common artifacts.

According to the recent report of National Academies, among the global challenges that would drive the future of chemical engineering are the decarbonization of energy systems, finding sustainable solutions for water, food and air quality, reducing the cost of medicine and work on resource utilization towards circular economy.

The Center for Innovative Materials Processing through Direct Digital Deposition (CIMP-3D) is an interdisciplinary, intercollegiate research lab dedicated to cutting-edge additive manufacturing technologies (AM). The center houses advanced equipment to support AM research of metal, polymer, and ceramic materials, to include non-destructive evaluation techniques via x-ray tomography.

Humans have the ability to recognize patterns, and architects in particular have a tendency to see them everywhere. This can be useful for research and design. I will discuss how decoding the logic behind the tessellation of the first geodesic dome can help the eco-conscious revival of an ancient wooden-roof construction method. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how we can apply known patterns and define new ones to increase the use of reclaimed materials, particularly bricks.