IEE faculty, staff, and projects in the news
'This is on our doorstep now': Wildfire smoke a reminder that climate change impacts human health
| jsonline.com
Smoke from Canadian wildfires that turned skies along the East Coast a sickly yellow has become yet another illustration of how changes in our climate foster extreme weather events. This article quotes Erica Smithwick, Distinguished Professor of Geography.
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Philly had its worst ‘fine particle’ air pollution day on record
| inquirer.com
Air Quality Index data from the past 24 years highlights how historic the hazardous levels were. This article quotes Erica Smithwick, Distinguished Professor of Geography.
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Canadian wildfire smoke: What is in the air, and what is the impact on you?
| cbsnews.com
With concerns about air quality, machines with the Allegheny County Health Department do a real-time sampling of the air. This article quotes Erica Smithwick, Distinguished Professor of Geography.
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What’s actually in all that smoke you’re breathing
| washingtonpost.com
The exact ingredients vary, but all wildfire smoke clouds are hazardous to people and the environment. This article quotes Erica Smithwick, Distinguished Professor of Geography.
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New wireless, rechargeable battery research aims to reduce surgical risks
| psu.edu
Researchers at Penn State are designing a new wireless rechargeable battery for biomedical electronics, such as cardiac pacemakers, that will potentially allow them to be charged and managed without the need for invasive surgery.
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Feifei Shi
Assistant Professor, John and Willie Leone Department of Energy & Mineral Engineering (EME)
'Growing Impact' podcast discusses carbon lifecycle in buildings, cities
| psu.edu
The latest episode of the "Growing Impact" podcast features a project that is exploring the best ways to quantify a city’s greenhouse gas emissions from the materials used to create its buildings.
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Seed Grant Projects
The Permian and the parks: the science of methane monitoring
| marfapublicradio.org
The national parks at Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns are helping scientists understand an unseen but consequential phenomena — the emissions of methane from the Permian Basin oilfield.
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Growing Impact: Urban embodied carbon
Every material that makes up a building, be it steel, concrete, wood, or plastic, has a greenhouse gas emission associated with it. This is called embodied carbon, and calculating the amount of GHG for one building is achievable. However, calculating that amount for an entire city is still a challenge, but a team of researchers is working to make that calculation achievable.
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Seed Grant Projects
Anti-abortion advocates turn to the environment: Is mifepristone in wastewater a threat?
| politifact.com
Abortion opponents are using a new argument in their efforts to restrict abortion access: the environment. This article quotes Heather Preisendanz, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering.
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Engineer receives NSF CAREER award to improve lithium-ion battery performance
| psu.edu
Feifei Shi, assistant professor in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, received a $594,788 Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award from the NSF to rethink foundational electrochemical models, and potentially transform how lithium-ion batteries are designed. The impact could be seen in all electrochemical applications that use liquid electrolytes, such as flow batteries, fuel cells and supercapacitors whose usage spans from consumer products to grid-scale energy storage.
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Feifei Shi
Assistant Professor, John and Willie Leone Department of Energy & Mineral Engineering (EME)
Penn State engineers report low-cost human biomarker sensor designs
| psu.edu
Penn State researchers have developed a low-cost, RNA-based technology to detect and measure biomarkers, which can help decode the body’s physiology. The presence of protein biomarkers can indicate chronic or acute conditions, from arthritis to cancer to bacterial infections, for which conventional tests can cost anywhere from $100 to upwards of $1,000. The new technology can perform the same measurement for about a dollar.
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Strategic city planning can help reduce urban heat island effect
| psu.edu
New Penn State research suggests that certain urban factors can reduce the tendency of cities to trap heat — a phenomenon called the “urban heat island.”
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Guangqing Chi
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Farzad Hashemi
Farzad HashemiFormer Graduate Student -
Lisa Iulo
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Ute Poerschke
