Electronics built with semiconductor technologies —vtransistors and integrated circuits — have had tremendous societal impact in the past decades. The advent of the quantum era, however, requires the development of new materials and paradigms. This is because the preservation of quantum coherence and quantum entanglement is essential to the operation of quantum devices, and classical scaling solutions, such as the copper interconnect layers used in any integrated circuit, no longer work.
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.
A remarkable feature of modern integrated circuit technology is its ability to operate in a stable fashion, almost indefinitely, without physical or chemical change. Recently developed classes of electronic materials and manufacturing approaches create an opportunity to engineer the opposite outcome, in the form of ‘transient’ devices that dissolve, disintegrate, degrade or otherwise physically disappear at triggered times or with controlled rates. Water-soluble transient electronic devices serve as the foundations for applications in zero-impact environmental monitors, 'green'
The Penn State Climate Consortium’s February Climate Conversations Café will feature Inuit leaders who will discuss the challenges of a rapidly changing Arctic.
Please join the Department of Entomology as they host Emilie Snell-Rood from the University of Minnesota as she presents on their research titled "Variation in pollutant exposure and tolerance across butterflies and bees: implications for conservation in pockets of urban habitat."
Explore proven methods, emerging trends, and agroecosystem impacts of cover crops in this expert-led webinar for agricultural professionals.
Currently in its third year, the Local Climate Action Program partners Penn State students (from any campus, any major, undergrad and grad) with local government officials from around Pennsylvania to complete local scale climate action planning. In the fall semester, we support students’ as they complete a comprehensive greenhouse gas inventory for the community – from collecting and interpreting data all the way through publicly presenting it to city councils.
An informative session on sustainable plastic waste management and its future potential with Prof. Ina Vollmer-Utrecht University- Seattle- Guest seminar for EME/CHE 597-Hosted by Prof. Ezgi Toraman.
Explore trends in large-scale solar development in Pennsylvania, including siting, zoning, legislation, and concerns for landowners and local governments, in this free, one-hour webinar.
Heather Preisendanz - Professor of Agricultural and Biological EngineeringTamie Veith - Agricultural Engineer, USDA Agricultural Research ServiceTitle: PFAS Fate and Transport in Agroecosystems and Rural Water SuppliesIn 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.
The College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School will be hosting Iman Fayyad, designer and assistant professor of architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), at 4 p.m. on Feb. 26 in the Stuckeman Family Jury Space for a lecture titled “Transient Form.”
Tropical cyclones (TCs) can generate costly hazards, and their coastal activities are particularly significant to our society. This talk will focus on the historical observations and simulations of coastal TC activities. First, I will present an analysis of the global mean change in TC frequency in coastal offshore regions based on observations. I will demonstrate that there has been a robust migration of TC activity toward the coasts, with an increase of two additional TCs per decade in global coastal offshore regions.
In this hands-on workshop – we will work to improve your ‘mapping game’ to ensure you are highlighting your work in the best possible way. Building a great interactive map involves a lot more than just ‘printing’ out a JPG or PDF from ArcGIS Pro. A few critical questions include: How will your labels and symbology change at different scales? What details are in your pop-ups? Should you include interactive charts or graphs?
Food systems account for approximately one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon-footprint labeling is an increasingly common tool to shift consumers towards lower-carbon diets. In a randomized field experiment with over 200,000 customers at a major US food-services company, we find that carbon labels increase customer retention by 1.1% and company profits by 0.9%, despite reducing customers' carbon footprints by only 0.6%. These profit effects suggest that carbon labeling may remain a common sustainability tool, despite its small environmental benefits.
Explore findings from Penn State Extension's study on the water quality of Pennsylvania roadside springs and their potential health implications in this no-cost, one-hour webinar.
Dr. Nandita Basu is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair of Global Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests cover a broad range of issues related to water quality in human-impacted environments. She uses data science, process modeling and remote sensing to explore how climate, land use, and management impacts surface and groundwater quality. She is an Earth Leadership Fellow and an American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fellow. She received the Joanne Simpson Medal and was selected to give the Paul A. Witherspoon Lecture in Hydrology at AGU.
Explore emerging technologies in food, agriculture, and natural systems through expert insights and interactive discussions in this free 1-hour webinar, part of the Harvesting Innovation series.This session explores how the initiative integrates technology to position Pennsylvania as a leading hub for agricultural and natural resource innovation. Learn how its research, education, and extension efforts drive industry competitiveness and bridge the gap between discovery and real-world application.Who is this for?
Despite its inception during the World War II era, the field of ultrasound biomedicine has enjoyed an explosion of new diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities, driven by advances in materials science, electronics miniaturization, and image processing. This talk will highlight ongoing collaborative research developing ultrasound nano-contrast agents that enable non-invasive and real-time imaging of physiologic phenomena at the single cell level.
Understanding the properties and structure of solid materials remains critical for advancing technologies across many fields. Through ultrasound, we can probe bulk volumes while maintaining microscale sensitivity to structural heterogeneities. I will introduce the basic principles of ultrasonic testing and share how we've applied this versatile approach to understand various systems.
Camelia Kantor’s talk will explore the journey of an unconventional, cross-disciplinary collaboration where stakeholder engagement plays a crucial role in validating scientific discovery and real-world impact. She will share case studies on dahlia flower research and beech leaf disease, two issues of pressing concern due to the destructive role of nematodes, and illustrate how researchers, farmers, government agencies and forestry and landscaping professionals found common ground to tackle these challenges.
The fundamental building blocks of quantum computers — quantum bits or qubits — have error rates that are over 20 orders of magnitude worse than their classical counterparts. How can one hope to perform accurate calculations with such noisy computers? Fortunately, there exists a well-accepted solution to this challenge, in theory — quantum error correction. In practice though, this requires encoding quantum information in a large network of qubits, which remains a significant engineering challenge.