To finish an amazing year in style, our group featured their work on CCS and carbon removal at AGU Fall Meeting – 2019. Udayan gave a talk on utilizing curtailed renewable power for direct air capture. Both Fangwei and Udayan also presented posters on region-specific CCS deployment in US, China and India. Thank you to all the supporters of our work and wishing everyone a Happy Holiday season ahead!
Fangwei’s new paper couples machine learning with LCA
Fangwei’s and Prof. Peterson’s new paper in Energy Conversion and Management with Prof. Mike Porter looks at ways to integrate machine learning models with LCAs for negative emissions. This work extends onto our lab’s prior research on hydrothermal treatment and helps identify critical considerations for success of this technology for widespread deployment.
Udayan participates in the 13th Graduate Climate Conference
Our graduate student, Udayan Singh, participated at the 13th Graduate Climate Conference at Woods Hole, MA. He presented a poster on scaling up of negative emission technologies and discussed collaborative avenues with fellow grad students from various dimensions of climate research. His travel and stay there have been generously sponsored by a travel grant awarded by the conference organizing committee.
Prof. Peterson speaks at Data and Climate Panel
In the Datapalooza 2019, the annual conference of the School of Data Science, Prof. Peterson was invited as a panelist on Data and Climate. She outlined some of the critical data science inputs that would lead to multi-scale benefits in modeling negative emissions technologies. The panel was moderated by Prof. Andres Clarens while other speakers were Prof. Deborah Lawrence and Prof. Bill Shobe.
New seed grant on antibiotic resistance
Our group was awarded an Engineering-in-Medicine seed grant from UVA’s Center for Engineering in Medicine on “Mitigating the Spread of Antibiotic Resistance and Its Associated Health Impacts in Clinical and Environmental Contexts”. This work will further our collaboration with Prof. Amy Mather’s team in the School of Medicine, who have been internationally recognized for their work studying the dynamics of antibiotic resistance in sink lab infrastructure at UVA, and it builds upon the work of PhD Student, Erica Loudermilk.
Fangwei defends dissertation proposal
Our PhD student, Fangwei Cheng, defended her dissertation proposal on assessing thermochemical routes to negative emissions. Good luck as she continues forward with her impressive work on this important subject!
Udayan presents at Oxford’s Net-Zero conference
Graduate student, Udayan Singh, participated in the International Conference on Achieving Net-Zero at the University of Oxford’s historic Holywell Music Room. He presented a poster on regionally appropriate BECCS strategies in the US and interacted with several researchers in the CO2 removal space.
Udayan presents at the Environmental Futures Forum
Our graduate student, Udayan Singh, presented his work on characterizing resilient energy systems at the Environmental Futures Forum, held in the historic Dome Room of the Rotunda. Thanks to our collaborators (Drs. Gokul Iyer, Bill Epling and Mark White) for their support in this work.
Graduate Students visit influential energy stakeholders
Summer 2019 was an exciting time for our group. Graduate student, Udayan Singh, visited the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) in College Park, MD. He received training in the Global Change Assessment Models (GCAM) and worked with Dr. Gokul Iyer there to define narratives for resilient energy sector scenarios. Jasmin Melara interned at the Department of Energy Headquarters to work on better handling of solid waste. These visits are expected to help broaden perspectives of our group and create new partnerships in the energy space.
New paper in Chemosphere offers insights on antibiotic resistance
A new paper from our group looks at the role algae-mediated treatment could play in reducing resistance to antibiotics. This approach could suppress antibiotic resistance in microbial communities downstream of wastewater treatment plants. The full paper is available at this link.