Due primarily to a fantastically diverse audience, (thank YOU) the Millennium Café has become a weekly interdisciplinary cup-o-goodness. Over the past 6+ years Café participants have been treated to >600 different talks spanning science, engineering, art, agriculture, ethics, live music, etc… In the spirit of keeping the Café fresh, engaging, and relevant we’ll take a few minutes to get your real time feedback on three questions – bring your device.
What if the barriers between human beings and science could be dissolved with individual and collective acts of communication? What if science communication begins with what each scientist believes about communicating? What if everything everywhere begins with what a human being believes? ... What was the question?
Using the ancient art of mask-making, we will explore “self” in the specific context of professional identity formation. I will discuss how this unique art form has helped me to explore multiple, liminal and evolving elements of identity. The conversation will focus on developing an authentic sense of self when competing demands create potential moral dilemmas as we seek to determine, refine and (potentially) reconcile our personal and professional identities.
This talk will present characterization, processing, and high-volume use of industrial waste products in producing high-performance concrete for infrastructure applications. Specifically, we will focus on the fluidized bed combustion (FBC) technology that is widely used in Pennsylvania for environmental cleanup of waste coal (gob) piles and producing electricity. The byproduct FBC ash contains dehydroxilated clays which can beneficially react with Ca- and Al-bearing phases in concrete. Opportunities and challenges will be presented.
The National Science Foundation recently funded a new ultrafast microscopy facility at Penn State through the Major Research Instrumentation program. This talk will begin with a description of the facility from the perspective of its use as a tool to examine the electronic properties of 2D materials and to tune those properties through control of doping chemistry. The second part of the talk will discuss plans to expand the scope of the facility to enable operando measurements of new electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution, formation of SEI layers at battery electrodes, and water dynamics in membranes for purification and energy applications among others.
The development of thermal analogues to electrical devices (diodes, transistors, etc) and the potential of integrated thermal systems is the next frontier in nano/micro scale thermal transport. This exciting new area of research represents uncharted territory for the thermal sciences community where until now, the primary objectives for controlling the flow of heat have been focused on fixing the properties of a material or interface to (a) be as conductive or resistive as possible and (b) maintain these properties both over time and under a variety of environmental conditions. My presentation will encompass a survey of the existing research on thermal diodes and transistors to date, as well as a perspective on future material/device architectures and other electrical-analogs including detectors and interconnects.