Millennium Café

Every year the world produces more trash and demands more energy. While the integrated biorefinery could produce renewable fuels from waste, its economic viability hinges on the ability to upgrade the unstable bio-oils currently produced, and to develop high-value byproducts. In a new approach to the integrated biorefinery, we incorporate inorganic compounds into cellulosic feedstocks to engineer solid products such as nanomaterials via biotemplating, heterogeneous adsorbents, and tunable carbon electrode materials, while simultaneously upgrading biofuels. This reduces the need for downstream upgrading and improves the economic viability of sustainable biomass to renewable fuel conversions.

Jillian Goldfarb | Energy and Mineral Engineering

Large birds (such as hawks, vultures, and eagles) as well as human sailplane pilots routinely exploit vertical air motion (lift) to remain aloft for several hours and fly hundreds of miles without flapping wings or the use of engines. We are developing algorithms inspired by both human- and bird-soaring to improve the flight of drones: we teach to soar. This talk will discuss what we have learned about robotic and bird flight, covering planning and flight control of robotic aircraft as well as our observations of bird flight.

Jack Langelaan | Aerospace Engineering

The emergence of antibiotic resistance driven in part by the overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics represents a growing health crisis worldwide.  This challenge is exacerbated by reduced financial incentives and regulatory challenges in the drug development pipeline.   We are developing a precision antimicrobial initiative enabled by recent advancements in life science, material science, and data science to stay ahead on the drug resistance treadmill. 

Pak Kin Wong | Biomedical Engineering | Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering

Multifunctional materials can act as machines for sensing, actuation, morphing, damage mitigation and limiting detrimental structural loads.  Industrial applications range from biomedical, aerospace, civil and automotive.  Shape memory alloys are a class of multifunctional materials that undergo large shape changes, and upon heating or removing external stimuli “remember” their original shape and form.  Underlying solid-state atomic and microstructure length scale phase transitions are reversible, which begets the bulk scale memory and thus smartly designing the microstructure can tailor alloy behavior.  In this talk, I will discuss our work using macro and micro-scale additive manufacturing and efforts to establish the interrelationships between novel fabrication technologies and shape memory functionality.

Designing and building self-propelled particles (artificial microswimmers) with the capabilities of complex swimming (combined translational and rotational motion) is challenging with conventional fabrication techniques, such as lithography or electrochemical deposition. In this talk, I will present on an alternative fabrication technique, 2-photon lithography, that has enabled 3-D printing of microswimmers capable of complex swimming behavior. This research demonstrates the advantages of the 2-photon lithography for 3-D printing and rapidly optimizing microstructures.

Presenter: Remmi Baker

For centuries, universities have contributed meaningfully to society through innovation, discovery, and educating future generations. In universities around the world, students and faculty are utilizing their intellectual resources and human capacity to tackle global challenges such as poverty, hunger, health, equality, and climate change. Unfortunately, sometimes in the pursuit to help others, we forget to reflect on the ethical issues that our actions may cause during and after international engagement. Come talk with me about ethical challenges in university-community international development and discuss how we can shift perceptions among university stakeholders from thinking of university international development as philanthropic to one of mutual respect and reciprocity.

Caitilin Grady | Civil Engineering and Rock Ethics Institute