Millennium Café

Energy is at the core of human activity and development. Solar energy from traditionally established technologies, such as Si photovoltaics (PV), has played a crucial role in the energy mix for decades: they are resilient, offer about 25 years of service, and do not contaminate water or generate waste. However, the new-generation energy-harvesting technologies suffer from severe degradation, leading to low long-term stability and lifetime. These challenges for organic and perovskite PVs, and efforts to understand and mitigate them, will be highlighted.

Presenter: Nutifafa Y. Doumon  |  Materials Science and Engineering

Suppose there is something you need to estimate or a hypothesis you need to test but due to ethical, technological, or practical limitations, you simply cannot collect the data you need. Let’s be honest, it’s probably because your paper is held up in peer review because a reviewer is asking about some potentially confounding factor that is impossible to measure. Regardless of why, what can you do about it? Besides giving up or making some unverifiable assumptions, are there rigorous solutions for statistical inference with limited data?

Presenter: Justin Silverman  |  College of IST

Minerals are a finite resource which is central to human welfare and economic development. The extraction of minerals is inherently unsustainable; destructive to the biophysical environment, and its contributions to human wellbeing are uneven. Despite this, minerals can bridge to sustainable development by providing essential raw materials for cleaner, more efficient, and more prosperous human societies.  Therefore, mining or the extraction of mineral resources presents a potentially transformative opportunity to support sustainable development while also posing challenges and risks to achieving it. Additionally, there is also significant attention paid to the reclaiming of metal from secondary sources, which are complex and do not necessarily subscribe to traditional process flowsheets.

The Earth and Environmental Systems Institute integrates research at the interface of earth, land, air, water, and human systems. Our researchers are at the cutting edge of understanding Earth's past, its current state, and its future. In this talk, I will highlight EESI's research portfolio and future vision. My goal is to solicit opportunities for engagement with the life sciences as we collectively address some of Earth's greatest challenges.  P.S. my 10 y.o. crafted this title, so if we don't do it FTK (for the kids), what are we doing?

Presenter: Erica Smithwick  |  Director, Earth & Environmental Systems Institute

Roughly half of all the energy we harness is lost to the environment as low-temperature heat. Though the energy efficiency of many industrial processes has steadily increased over the years, the untapped potential of low-temperature heat is still enormous. In this talk, I will introduce a new take on an old battery concept to get a more useful power out of our energy resources. Though the weight of these batteries will likely keep them out of a car and many other portable devices,  their low-cost design makes them an attractive option for stationary power generation applications.

A new imperative in the life sciences emerged with the realization that microbes are important drivers, rather than passengers, of the well-being of plants, animals, and humans.  Albeit we have significantly advanced our understanding of microbial life distribution on Earth, our ability to manipulate and/or harness beneficial functions from complex microbiomes remains limited. In this talk, I will dive into the integration of Ecology, Microbiology, and Chemistry as core disciplines and provide a new perspective on how we can effectively ‘orchestrate’ microbial functions across systems. 

Presenter: Francisco Dini-Andreote  |  Plant Science