Millennium Café

The United States and many other countries have been regulating the emissions of airborne particulates from power plants, vehicles and industry for decades. These policies have yielded drastic improvements in health and well-being through cleaner air. Recent interdisciplinary work at Penn State has highlighted mechanisms through which climate policy can make the air even cleaner.  Well-designed climate policy can improve not only the health of future generations but can also save lives and reduce sickness today.  In some cases, the immediate benefits of cleaner air can dwarf the benefits of climate mitigation. Achieving these benefits requires well designed climate policy that is coordinated over many different jurisdictions and is an active area of interdisciplinary research and engagement.

Atmospheric particles are everywhere in the atmosphere, but they are not evenly distributed. Atmospheric transport interacts with the sources and sinks of atmospheric trace constituents to create complex spatial and temporal patterns. I will describe how we measure and simulate the atmospheric distributions of trace compounds and how we can use this information: 1) to learn more about sources and sinks of these compounds and 2) to develop hyperlocal air quality and environmental health assessments.

Speaker: Kenneth Davis  |  Meteorology & Atmospheric Science

Funding agencies are placing greater emphasis on the application of basic science to create impact, resulting in moving innovations to commercialization and/or to benefit society.  To help faculty at all levels, this discussion will be the first in a series of presentation on engaging with industry to increase funding opportunities, open new avenues for application of your discoveries, attracting and retaining corporate members to your centers and consortium, and other relevant topics.  This initial discussion will briefly touch on upon resources available to connect you to industry and conclude with a query to identify industry engagement topics that would be of interest and support your work. 

Speaker: Geanie Umberger  |  Office of Industrial Partnerships

Sustainable (or environment-conscious) computing concerns the consumption of compute resources in a way that leads to a net zero impact on the environment. It is a very broad concept that includes not just power/energy but also ecosystems,  pollution (e.g., discarded hardware), and natural resources (e.g., water).  While reducing power/energy consumption of computing certainly contributes to sustainability, it is only one part of a very complex problem. Specifically, to achieve sustainability, one needs a multipronged strategy, which spans green sourcing, e-waste, regulations, and AI. In this talk, I will introduce the problem as well as its different aspects, and present some promising research directions.

Presenter: Mahmut Kandemir  |  Computer Science & Engineering

From our initial investigations of the health impacts from exposure to inhaled particles about 100 years ago, new capabilities in characterizing and monitoring exposures are transforming our knowledge base and pointing the way towards new options for mitigating policy and risk assessment. This presentation will review some recent research in this field and highlight where future policy and standards may be pointing.

Presenter: Jeremy Gernand  |  Energy & Mineral Engineering

Aerosol particles are ubiquitous in the environment, have complex physicochemical properties, and impact human health and climate.  This talk will give a wide overview of research in the area of aerosol chemistry with particular focus on the dynamics of liquid-liquid phase separation in submicron aerosol particles with application to disease transmission, ice nucleation of microplastics and biological particles, and measurement of aerosol acidity through the use of carbon quantum dots.