Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

The Penn State Outreach K-12 Engagement Network and Penn State Sustainability are pleased to host the inaugural Penn State K-12 Sustainability Summit, a two-day event that brings together the K-12 and Penn State communities to collaborate on new pathways to increase sustainability efforts in the K-12 space. Attendees will engage in design thinking workshops to surface the sustainability-based needs of individual schools and how partnerships with Penn State can support the unique needs of K-12 school systems. 

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.

October's presentation will be Tim Ryan on “Quantification and visualization of skeletal microstructure using microCT” Join the Penn State Computed Tomography (CT) Users Group, hosted by the Center for Quantitative Imaging (CQI). This group is open to faculty, students, and researchers across all Penn State campuses who are interested in harnessing the power of computed tomography for their work. All experience levels are welcome, from novice to expert.  What is Computed Tomography?

Rational addiction models have long been pivotal in understanding addictive behavior, yet empirical investigations often overlook the complexities inherent in household-level consumption dynamics. Leveraging comprehensive scanner data from the Circana consumer network dataset and supplementary health data from the Medprofiler survey, this study provides a household-level analysis of rational addiction to ultra-processed food products and its implications for health outcomes.

The Penn State Outreach K-12 Engagement Network and Penn State Sustainability are pleased to host the inaugural Penn State K-12 Sustainability Summit, a two-day event that brings together the K-12 and Penn State communities to collaborate on new pathways to increase sustainability efforts in the K-12 space. Attendees will engage in design thinking workshops to surface the sustainability-based needs of individual schools and how partnerships with Penn State can support the unique needs of K-12 school systems. 

Recently, there has been a growing demand for graduate students of all disciplines to communicate well with diverse audiences about what they do and why they do it. In two consecutive sessions devoted to the composition and delivery of a short research or scholarship presentation, we will explore how structured and dynamic communication can set a speaker on a path for success. In the first session, participants will have an opportunity to draft content that summarizes their project in effective ways that will reach a non-specialized audience.

While thermal property analyses (TGA, DSC, SDT) are often considered routine techniques the published literature demonstrates that these are frequently misused or underutilized.  I will review the capabilities of the MCL thermal analysis suite to include highlighting the less obvious information that can be obtained with each technique.  Additionally, the tradeoffs associated with each technique will be discussed to provide practical guidance for choosing the proper analyses.

Wood is an amazing biomaterial and can be used to produce paper, energy, and construction materials. Can we engineer wood to meet or even surpass the toughness and durability of carbon-intensive products like concrete and steel? I will discuss ongoing collaborative research that seeks to generate and characterize advanced materials from Northeastern hardwoods, which cover much of Pennsylvania and represent carbon sinks that can help build the bioeconomy.

Countries across the Global South face water management challenges at both ends of the spectrum: sometimes there is too much water in the case of flooding and at other times there is not enough water to support agriculture and development. This talk will examine how water management decisions – with the examples of dams in sub-Saharan Africa and rice production in India – exacerbate socio-economic vulnerability today and in the future. Ongoing and future research ideas will be presented with the aim of providing evidence to support policy-making in these contexts. 

Join us as Johnson Controls highlights their role to support client efforts on climate mitigation, resilience, and sustainability within the commercial buildings sector. Learn of their commitments to environmental sustainability and building energy efficiency. In addition, First National Bank will discuss financial solutions for renewable energy. Specifically, new opportunities for municipalities to pursue tax credits from the Federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). ​  Presenters:

The EcoSpatial summit brings together both experts and novices to foster knowledge sharing, collaboration, and innovation around applications of the spatial datasets featured in the Beescape platform and beyond to ecosystem services and conservation. Participants can expect insightful talks from experts, engaging discussions on the latest trends and developments, interactive workshops to access Beescape data for research applications, and networking opportunities to connect with other researchers.

Forests are crucial for the production of high-quality freshwater resources. Complex interactions between climate change and forest processes can result in uncertainty in freshwater availability to downstream communities and the environment. In this talk, we will investigate how long-term hydrologic nonstationary and seasonal flow patterns have responded to greenup variability and long-term greening across the eastern United States over the last four decades.

Comparison is a powerful tool for illuminating how and why certain mechanisms or processes shape similar or different outcomes in particular cases. This talk considers two cases of deindustrialization—one rural, one urban—to demonstrate how comparison across space can be useful to scholars of rural development.

Discover new resources, partnerships, and funding available to support climate resiliency within communities across Appalachia! There is more federal government funding than ever before to support climate resiliency, though many communities lack the personnel, expertise, and infrastructure to take advantage. A regional coalition led by the Steel Valley Authority with participation of 5 states have obtained funding to create new Appalachian Sustainable Finance Hubs to address this challenge. ​ Presenters: 

Methane is the primary feedstock for hydrogen production, accomplished by catalytic steam methane reforming (SMR). But methane is also a potent greenhouse gas (GHG), so its emission to the atmosphere must be minimized by catalytic methane oxidation. In this talk, I will describe three catalytic reaction engineering solutions that address current challenges in methane conversion and abatement. Electrified SMR: Joule heating of catalysts supported on metallic substrates is shown to enhance the methane conversion rate.

The EcoSpatial summit brings together both experts and novices to foster knowledge sharing, collaboration, and innovation around applications of the spatial datasets featured in the Beescape platform and beyond to ecosystem services and conservation. Participants can expect insightful talks from experts, engaging discussions on the latest trends and developments, interactive workshops to access Beescape data for research applications, and networking opportunities to connect with other researchers.

A substantial number of studies have been published since the Ninth International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones (IWTC-9) in 2018, improving our understanding of the effect of climate change on tropical cyclones (TCs) and associated hazards and risks. These studies have reinforced the robustness of increases in TC intensity and associated TC hazards and risks due to anthropogenic climate change.

Learn about the updated rates for equipment and services provided by the Energy and Environmental Sustainability Laboratories. 

Learn of the successful community engagement models and tools employed in Pennsylvania! Local and county governments are critical to the climate action needs and issues facing our communities – engagement in climate planning helps to truly represent the entire community. Presenters:  Pam Adams, Sustainability Planner, Centre Region Council of Governments Neale Dougherty, Director of Sustainability, Bucks County Planning Commission

A large number of widely replicated laboratory experiments document systematic violations of expected utility theory. This has led to the proliferation of behavioral models of decision under risk including most prominently Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory. These alternatives to expected utility theory generally introduce additional degrees of freedom, allowing the model to fit the data. This raises the question of the degree to which behavioral models may be overfitting in the laboratory setting.