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Director's Message:
Happy new year! I hope you had a peaceful holiday break spending quality time with friends and family.
At a recent IRI meeting, the topic of companies blending R&D and supply chain management to create a more robust supply chain came up. I thought this was an interesting new perspective combining logistics, new product development, sustainability, and DE&I - all of which seem critical to the success of this mission. Each of these elements has a footprint here at the PME as I will explain. The theory groups are able to model and optimize logistical challenges, new product development being the bread and butter of your typical PME engineer, sustainability being a key theme in the PME, and DE&I using UChicago as a stepping stone for hiring coastal natives to the midwest. I encourage you to look and inquire, leveraging your intellectual curiosity about how the PME can become a great hub and partner for innovation!
This is a longer than usual edition with many new developments and I hope you have some time to browse through this newsletter! Just to refresh your memory, we ended the last letter leading up to the PME's 10th anniversary event with a few pictures on the right. Recorded videos of the events are available on the PME youtube channel. The following month (Oct 2021), the University of Chicago's chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) was formed and held their first public outreach event to engage local families, students with scientists and influential panelists. The idea was to introduce them to STEM and opportunities to make the world a better place through engineering. If you are looking for opportunities to sponsor an event related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) - this is a great opportunity as it encourages talent from under-represented areas, develops graduate student leadership and coordination experience, and brings the community together.
Graduate students from PME are known to be adept story tellers of complex research topics and good at explaining these topics to non-experts. To encourage and sustain this talent seed, a pilot program in enhancing communications skills aimed at senior graduate students, Masters degree students, and postdoctoral students is being deployed. Mentors, Judges, and Panelists from industry are participating in this to share their experiences and guide this program. This also couples nicely with the Industry Seminar Series focused on bridging academia-industry career anxieties, and facilitating networking opportunities. More details about this below.
Because the PME is growing quickly, and a very important metric is placing our students into industrial positions, Dr. Briana Konnick was recently brought in as the Director of Career Development. She will focus on talent development, recruitment, and work with colleagues on topics such as this pilot program in enhancing communications skills. She trained as a virologist and previously worked in a similar role for the University and so comes highly qualified - welcome Briana!
Chicago is home to a burgeoning space technology and development community. In fact, one of our first speakers at the Industry seminar series was David Hurst, who is the co-founder of Orbital Transports, a small satellite development company. There is a contest :
smallsatcontest that will award $10k to the idea that they incorporate into their satellite! The deadline is January 14th, 2022!
As always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have! I find that the best way to keep these strategies fresh and interesting is to revisit them often!
Best,
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Felix Lu
Director of Corporate Engagement
The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
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Recruiting Advanced-Degree Talent at PME
From immunoengineers, materials scientists, computational experts, and quantum engineers, PME offers a wealth of advanced-degree talent pools with extensive technical and professional training. If you are interested in recruiting PME master’s students, PhD students, and postdocs, please reach out directly to Briana Konnick, PME’s Director of Career Development (bkonnick@uchicago.edu). Some common opportunities for engagement include:
- Host an on-campus or virtual information session
- Share jobs and internships
- Interview trainees on-campus or virtually
- Host a coffee chat or roundtable discussion for more informal engagement
Allow us to create tailored offerings that meet your hiring objectives. Reach out today to set up a meeting!
Employer information sessions coming in the New Year:
- January 2022: Shell
- February 2022: Corning
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The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) commemorated its 10-year anniversary Friday, Sept. 17 through Saturday, Sept. 18, with special events highlighting the school’s ongoing mission to develop new solutions for pressing global challenges. Events were held online and in-person at the University of Chicago’s David Rubenstein Forum with presentations from industry leaders, PME faculty, and members of the scientific community.
In addition to marking Pritzker Molecular Engineering’s anniversary, the events were an opportunity for leaders in science and engineering to share their experiences with the school and discuss the state of the field. The program included lectures, panel discussions, fireside chats, and Q&A sessions with Nobel laureates Frances Arnold, Bernard L. Feringa, and William D. Philips; leadership from the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and National Institutes of Health; and leaders from the university, including Chancellor Robert J. Zimmer.
Matthew Tirrell, dean of Pritzker Molecular Engineering, spoke about the school’s past and future.
“PME started with the mission to affect profoundly the future of engineering and applied science research and education and ultimately to benefit humanity,” Tirrell said. “Our focus on a few particular transformative topics in engineering science has enabled us to compete with the very best traditional engineering programs in those areas.”
“The next 10 years will be about the scale of our existing activities, investment in strategically chosen new opportunities, broadening educational offerings, and the acceleration of commercialization activities.”
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“It is really exciting to receive the ECS Toyota Young Investigator Award,” said Amanchukwu. “It allows us to branch into new areas related to solid-state electrolytes that could be transformative for lithium batteries.”
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“Now that we understand these materials and can control them, we can take advantage of their unique optical properties. The next step is deploying them in devices and sensors to demonstrate their usefulness.”
--Prof. Juan de Pablo
Importantly, these crystals can form blue phase crystals, which, because of their unique structure, can reflect blue and green light, and can be switched on and off incredibly quickly. But these crystals only exist in a small range of temperatures and are inherently unstable: heating them up even 1 degree can destroy their properties. That has limited their use in technologies.
Through simulation and experiments, the team was able to stabilize the blue phase crystals through the formation of so-called double emulsions. They used a small core droplet of a water-based solution surrounded by an outer droplet of an oily chiral liquid crystal, thereby creating a “core and shell” structure. That structure was itself suspended in another water-based liquid, unmixable with the liquid crystal. Over the appropriate range of temperatures, they were able to trap the chiral liquid crystal in the shell in a “blue phase” state. They then formed a polymer network within the shell, which stabilized the blue crystal without destroying its properties.
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An assistant professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Chicago, John Anderson, BS/MS ’08, has patented a material that can store and produce energy more efficiently and sustainably than current methods.
The patented iron sulfide-based material is fabricated in either a bulk powder or as a thin film deposited on a substrate material.
The researchers were interested in discovering new materials that offer either enhanced performance or lower costs for energy storage schemes, said Anderson. This includes electrodes used in supercapacitor devices, such as electric vehicles, among others. The electrodes could also be used in lithium and sodium batteries for electronic devices and have applications in grid energy storage.
“What’s exciting about our discovery is that we can take a material that has been investigated, iron sulfide, and structure it into nanosheets. These nanosheets should enable faster and more reversible charging in battery applications,” Anderson explained.
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Replacing casual conversations with something deeper could be the cure for late-pandemic malaise.
As covid-19 cases continue to drop, Americans who have been careful about social distancing are coming out of social hibernation and meeting new people again. This could mean returning to the dreaded world of small talk. “Hey, what’s up?” “Terrible weather we’re having, isn’t it?” Given such shallow exchanges, you would be excused for wondering whether another period of social distancing would be preferable.
In surveys we have conducted, most people said they wished they had more meaningful conversations in their daily lives. This is a wise inclination: Behavioral science research consistently finds that the more deep and intimate conversations people have on a given day, the happier they are that day. The more time people spend in small talk, in contrast, the more likely they are to feel — well, not much of anything in particular. Small talk is conversation’s purgatory, biding time waiting for the good stuff.
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Communications Skills for working in Industry – Pilot Course – 2022
As a relatively young and uniquely positioned engineering school, one of the strengths of the advanced training at PME is a focus on professional skill development. Building on this, Laura Rico-Beck, Briana Konnick, and Felix Lu are piloting a new course focused on training PME graduate students for effective communication in various industrial contexts.
This new, 4-part training will provide effective communication skill development, opportunities for active practice, and incorporation of real-world applications in industrial contexts such as job interviews, conferences, collaborations, investor pitches, and more. This program incorporates mentors from industry and will culminate in a capstone research presentation to industrial judges. Stay tuned for more details!
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Over the past five years, CAR T-cell therapy has given some cancer patients hope for remission. This form of immunotherapy adds a gene — called a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR — to a patient’s T cells, which helps these immune cells find and attack cancers.
To continue improving this therapy, researchers need specific, sensitive, and precise reagents that can detect CARs in blood samples. That helps them understand how well the therapy is working in a patient, and also helps them develop new CARs for improved therapies.
The research, led by graduate student Yifei Hu in the lab of Prof. Jun Huang, was published in the journal Matter. The study resulted from a collaboration between the labs of Huang and Justin Kline, associate professor of medicine.
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Nicolas Chevrier, assistant professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago, has received $2 million in direct funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support his research on vaccine adjuvants. With the new grant, Chevrier will investigate the mechanisms that enable adjuvant triplet combinations to affect the immune system.
The grant, officially part of the Molecular Mechanisms of Combination Adjuvants (MMCA) program, was created to promote the understanding of novel adjuvant combinations. Adjuvants are a class of highly specialized compounds used in vaccines to influence the body’s response, often boosting a person’s immune reaction. Currently, only a handful of adjuvants are used in modern vaccines.
Because of their ability to boost vaccine effectiveness, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) considers adjuvant development a high-priority research area, and in 2016, they initiated the MMCA program. The program’s goal is to understand and potentially develop new combination adjuvants to improve vaccine responses in compromised populations such as young children and the elderly.
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The term “microbiome” is shorthand for the vast and still largely unexplored worlds of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microorganisms that inhabit every corner of the planet. Bacteria form tiny ecosystems side by side with our own cells on our skin, in our mouths and along our airways and digestive tracts, as well as on all the surfaces we interact with—including our homes, workplaces, and hospitals, and the air, water, and soil.
These microbes are so impactful that some researchers consider them to be a separate organ, which shapes our metabolism, susceptibility to allergic and inflammatory diseases, and even responses to medical treatments. But scientists at the University of Chicago and other institutions around the world are just beginning to fully understand the role that bacteria play in our health.
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In the race to find potential treatments for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, researchers have often focused on how to disrupt the functional proteins on the virus’s active binding site — the spike that binds to human cells.
But using simulations, researchers at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago have found a different way to disrupt the virus: through compounds that bind at a previously unidentified distant binding site (far from the main active site) of one of the virus’ proteins, thereby destabilizing it and inhibiting its ability to replicate.
They also found that an existing natural compound, luteolin, interacts in this way with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
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When it became clear in the spring of 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 was spreading around the world, University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) faculty joined a campus-wide effort at the University of Chicago to gather and donate personal protective equipment—N95 face masks, face shields, gowns,
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surgical gloves, and boot covers from their labs—to health care works both locally and around the country.
At the same time, Pritzker Molecular Engineering faculty quickly pivoted their work to focus on pressing research questions around vaccines, diagnostic tests, drugs, and other technology to help the world cope with the deadly pathogen.
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The National Science Foundation on Sept. 9 announced it will fund a new endeavor to bring atomic-level precision to the devices and technologies that underpin much of modern life, and will transform fields like information technology in the decades to come. The five-year, $25 million grant will found the Center for Integration of Modern Optoelectronic Materials on Demand (IMOD), a collaboration of scientists and engineers at 11 universities led by the University of Washington, of which the University of Chicago is a partner.
IMOD research will center on new semiconductor materials and scalable manufacturing processes for new optoelectronic devices for applications ranging from displays and sensors to a technological revolution, under development today, that’s based on harnessing the principles of quantum mechanics.
“In the early days of electronics, a computer would fill an entire room. Now we all carry around smartphones that are millions of times more powerful in our pockets,” said IMOD director David Ginger, the Alvin L. and Verla R. Kwiram Endowed Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, chief scientist at the UW Clean Energy Institute and co-director of NW IMPACT. “Today, we see an opportunity for advances in materials and scalable manufacturing to do the same thing for optoelectronics: Can we take a quantum optics experiment that fills an entire room, and fit thousands—or even millions—of them on a chip, enabling a new revolution? Along the way, we anticipate IMOD’s science will help with a few more familiar challenges, like improving the display of the cell phone you already have in your pocket, so the battery lasts longer.”
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“It’s rapidly becoming clear that quantum sensing could be transformative in the next phases of biology research,” –University of Chicago chemistry professor, Greg Engel
Nuclear magnetic resonance, a physical phenomenon where nuclei absorb and re-emit energy when placed in a magnetic field, was first described in 1938. But it took almost 30 years, until 1969, for this fundamental physics discovery to find its most widely known application: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a crucial diagnostic tool in medical and biological research.
Now in the 21st century, researchers can make quantum devices precise enough to sense single ions—and University of Chicago chemistry professor Greg Engel doesn’t want to wait 30 years to find their most useful applications.
“It’s rapidly becoming clear that quantum sensing could be transformative in the next phases of biology research,” Engel says.
The advantage of superposition
Quantum technology takes advantage of scientific phenomena that are only accessible on the smallest of scales, such as the concept of superposition: where a system exists in a combination of possible states rather than in a single one. This unique characteristic of quantum systems is quite fragile—when a quantum system in superposition interacts with its environment in any way, its superposition “collapses” and it exists in one state instead of many.
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Zhong’s research focuses on the hardware needed to make the quantum internet a reality, things like quantum chips that encrypt and decrypt quantum information, and quantum repeaters that relay information across network lines. To create that hardware, Zhong and his team work on the subatomic scale, using individual atoms to hold information and single photons to transmit it through optic cables.
Zhong’s current work centers on finding ways to fight against quantum decoherence, which is when information stored on a quantum system degrades to the point that it’s no longer retrievable. Decoherence is an especially difficult obstacle to overcome because quantum states are extremely sensitive and any outside force — be it heat, light, radiation, or vibration — can easily destroy it.
Most researchers address decoherence by keeping quantum computers at a temperature near absolute zero. But the instant any quantum state is transmitted outside the freezer, say on a network line, it begins to break down within a few microseconds, severely limiting the potential for expansive interconnectivity.
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To help leaders start planning, we conducted extensive research and interviewed 47 experts around the globe about quantum hardware, software, and applications; the emerging quantum-computing ecosystem; possible business use cases; and the most important drivers of the quantum-computing market. In the report Quantum computing: An emerging ecosystem and industry use cases, we discuss the evolution of the quantum-computing industry and dive into the technology’s possible commercial uses in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, automotive, and finance—fields that may derive significant value from quantum computing in the near term. We then outline a path forward and how industry decision makers can start their efforts in quantum computing.
One of the authors, Rodney Zemmel is on the PME advisory council.
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Aided by a combination of sophisticated computational tools, the team's simulations tracked the pairing of individual vacancies into a divacancy. Their efforts reaped a harvest of pivotal discoveries that should pave the way for new quantum devices. One is that the more silicon vacancies there are relative to carbon vacancies at the start of heat treatment, the more divacancies afterwards. Another is the determination of the best temperatures for creating stable divacancies and for altering their orientation within the crystal structure without destroying them.
Scientists may be able to use the latter discovery for aligning the orientation of all the divacancies in the same direction. That would be highly desirable for sensing applications able to operate with many times the resolution of today's sensors.
"A totally unexpected and exciting finding was that divacancies can convert into an entirely new type of defect," added Lee. These newly discovered defects consist of two carbon vacancies paired with what scientists call an anti-site. That is a site in which a carbon atom has filled the vacancy left open by the removal of a silicon atom. |
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Does your technical management want an executive understanding of Quantum Engineering and how it may benefit your company? |
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The latest updates and ways to engage:
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Materials Systems for Health and Sustainability |
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Unusual material could improve the reliability of electronics and other devices
All activity generates heat, because energy escapes from everything we do. But too much can wear out batteries and electronic components—like parts in an aging laptop that runs too hot to actually sit on your lap. If you can’t get rid of heat, you’ve got a problem.
Scientists at the University of Chicago have invented a new way to funnel heat around at the microscopic level: a thermal insulator made using an innovative technique. They stack ultra-thin layers of crystalline sheets on top of each other, but rotate each layer slightly, creating a material with atoms that are aligned in one direction but not in the other.
“Think of a partly-finished Rubik’s cube, with layers all rotated in random directions,” said Shi En Kim, a graduate student with the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering who is the first author of the study. “What that means is that within each layer of the crystal, we still have an ordered lattice of atoms, but if you move to the neighboring layer, you have no idea where the next atoms will be relative to the previous layer—the atoms are completely messy along this direction.”
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It’s estimated that by the end of the decade, electric vehicle sales will drive lithium demand to five times its current level. That sudden increase has companies looking for new sources of the valuable metal, but one scientist at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago believes we have all the lithium we need, and it’s waiting just offshore.
To prevent the looming shortfall, many countries, including the United States, are searching for sustainable extraction methods and more secure sources for the in-demand element. That’s where Chong Liu, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME), comes in.
Asst. Prof. Chong Liu
Liu is a materials scientist—she studies the properties of matter in order to create highly specialized materials. Currently, her lab is developing a new type of electrode that, using a process called electrochemical intercalation, can extract valuable elements from seawater. And while Liu’s work is still in its early stages, it could present one of the most sustainable methods for extracting lithium anywhere.
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UChicago-Argonne scientist explores more sustainable ways to make use of water
There are a lot of problems in our world today, but if our water systems aren’t working, everything else takes a backseat. From a lack of freshwater to droughts on the West Coast to contaminants like PFAS and lead in many of our homes, our water systems are in trouble. But one scientist sees a solution to our making our water system sustainable by using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Junhong Chen is a professor of molecular engineering at the University of Chicago and the lead water strategist at UChicago-affiliated Argonne National Laboratory. He’s using AI to address many of our global water crises in some surprising ways.
(Episode published October 7, 2021)
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The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago has recruited Shirley Meng, an internationally recognized leader in energy storage research, to serve as a professor of molecular engineering. Meng will also hold the position of chief scientist for the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS).
A pioneer in material science, Meng’s research centers on measuring, controlling, and manipulating fundamental energy storage devices, which has led to more powerful, safer, and longer-lasting batteries. She is a leading expert in applying advanced X-ray imaging to the study of electrode material. Meng has also led the development of liquefied gas electrolytes, allowing for a new class of battery that can operate at -112°F. Current lithium-ion batteries cannot operate under -4°F.
“Shirley is a world-leading researcher and an engineer whose success validates the central ethos of PME—that engineers of the next generation must adapt multiple disciplines to meet future demands,” said Matthew Tirrell, dean of PME. “Her work regarding material design for energy storage aligns perfectly with, and will greatly expand, PME’s existing theme of Materials Systems for Sustainability and Health. She and her lab bring exceptional talent and expertise in next-generation battery development to the University, Argonne, and the Chicagoland area.”
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The framework is formed by aluminum-based rods that are connected by “linker” molecules. As water begins to enter the framework, the first three water molecules attach to the linkers and the rods. The next water molecules bond mainly to the initially adsorbed water molecules, which can be thought as “seed water.”
Now that scientists have a solid understanding of the mechanism of how water binds to the framework, they can narrow down other frameworks with better performance.
However, improving this material can be a tricky process, because making the bonds stronger between the metal-organic framework and the water molecules doesn’t necessarily mean better output. “You want the material to adsorb water molecules, but the binding can't be too strong because then the water can’t be released and collected,” said Gagliardi, who is jointly appointed in UChicago’s Department of Chemistry and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. |
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Articles of interest to our corporate affiliates, but not associated with the University of Chicago |
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The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (Iupac) has announced its annual list of the top ten emerging technologies in chemistry. Several tackle environmental and sustainability challenges, while others address the ongoing pandemic, focusing on new solutions to prevent the spread of pathogens, and were picked by a panel of independent experts.
‘The panel tries to identify those with the greatest potential impact, but we also want to provide a diverse and inspirational list,’ explains Javier García Martínez, Iupac’s president-elect. ‘Every single technology we include is both exciting and has the potential to contribute to solving major global challenges. For example, green ammonia has the potential to significantly reduce the CO2 emissions involved in fertiliser production, whereas single cell metabolomics provide us with new tools to study cell biology.’
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Businesses tend to value profit over people and planet. Climate change is forcing them to evolve.
In his 2021 letter to CEOs, Larry Fink, the CEO and chairman of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, wrote: “No issue ranks higher than climate change on our clients’ lists of priorities.”
His comment reflected a growing unease with how the climate crisis is already disrupting businesses.
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In theory, hydrogen is the dream fuel. In practice, things are trickier
Derived from the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen fuel is clean, flexible, and energy-efficient. Current projections indicate that by 2030 the hydrogen economy could be worth $500bn. Yet hydrogen power has had a historically bumpy ride—and there are still obstacles to widespread adoption. Could recent innovation, pushes to decarbonise the energy sector and a global interest in reaching a “net zero” world at last make hydrogen commercially viable?
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Despite the pandemic, the quest for net zero emissions and halting global warming has never left the headlines. Quite the opposite: achieving the 2050 climate targets has become inextricably linked with the recovery from COVID-19 – a chance to “build back better”.
Policymakers, energy firms and scientists are hoping to use carbon-free ‘green’ hydrogen as a fuel of the future for power generation, long-haul transportation and industry. But despite significant advances, the hydrogen market needs a major boost if it is to play a key part in the race to net zero. A new technology referred to as ‘turquoise’ hydrogen production could be what is needed to fast-track its development.
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The Global Hydrogen Review is a new annual publication by the International Energy Agency to track progress in hydrogen production and demand, as well as in other critical areas such as policy, regulation, investments, innovation and infrastructure development.
The report is an output of the Clean Energy Ministerial Hydrogen Initiative (CEM H2I) and is intended to inform energy sector stakeholders on the status and future prospects of hydrogen while serving as an input to the discussions at the Hydrogen Energy Ministerial Meeting (HEM) organised by Japan. It examines what international progress on hydrogen is needed to help address climate change – and compares real-world developments with the stated ambitions of government and industry and with key actions under the Global Action Agenda launched at the HEM in 2019.
Focusing on hydrogen’s usefulness for meeting climate goals, this Review aims to help decision makers fine-tune strategies to attract investment and facilitate deployment of hydrogen technologies while also creating demand for hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels.
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It is also a delicate one
Today’s hydrogen business is, in global terms, reasonably small, very dirty and completely vital. Some 90m tonnes of the stuff are produced each year, providing revenues of over $150bn—approaching those of ExxonMobil, an oil and gas company. This is done almost entirely by burning fossil fuels with air and steam—a process which uses up 6% of the world’s natural gas and 2% of its coal and emits more than 800m tonnes of carbon dioxide, putting the industry’s emissions on the same level as those of Germany.
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Sweden’s first-ever hydrogen-powered garbage truck from Scania.
The historic Paris Agreement of December 2015 set out to reach net carbon neutrality by 2050. Confirmed by the members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the agreement aims to keep global warming below 2ºC by the year 2100. But the world needs more than just renewable energy to decarbonize all sectors of the economy and to meet climate and sustainability goals.
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Sunlight can chemically breakdown plastics into tens of thousands of new compounds that in just weeks and many of these dissolve in water, a study led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has found. The discovery dispels the prevalent theory that sunlight exposure simply physically fragments macroplastics into microplastics in the marine environment, turning them into smaller particles that are chemically similar to the original material and persist in the environment.
The researchers examined the breakdown under sunlight of four different single-use consumer polyethylene plastic bags from three major US retailers – Target, CVS and Walmart – and compared them to pure polyethylene film. After analysing the resultant organic compounds using a mass spectrometer equipped with a 21 tesla magnet, the team discovered that the bags produced between 5000 and 15,000 compounds under sunlight exposure, compared with about 9000 with the pure polyethylene.
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To harvest lithium from the oceans, chemists are developing methods that can isolate the element from dilute solutions filled with chemically similar elements
Lithium might seem wimpy, with its ultralow density and tiny mass. But element number 3 ranks as a technological heavyweight. The alkaline metal’s electrochemical properties coupled with its low weight make lithium ideal for use in batteries. Lithium batteries have turned the world upside down because they are powerful and pack a lot of energy into a relatively small and light device. They put the “portable” in portable electronics, and they are driving electric vehicles’ explosion in popularity
The growth in lithium batteries is happening so quickly that manufacturers are on track to consume one-third of the world’s land-based lithium in the next few decades, according to market analysts. With lithium in short supply on land and concentrated in just a handful of countries, researchers are looking for ways to mine the element from the oceans, which collectively hold 5,000 times as much lithium as that found on land.
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Today’s powerful but little-understood artificial intelligence breakthroughs echo past examples of unexpected scientific progress.
Is artificial intelligence the new alchemy? That is, are the powerful algorithms that control so much of our lives — from internet searches to social media feeds — the modern equivalent of turning lead into gold? Moreover: Would that be such a bad thing?
According to the prominent AI researcher Ali Rahimi and others, today’s fashionable neural networks and deep learning techniques are based on a collection of tricks, topped with a good dash of optimism, rather than systematic analysis. Modern engineers, the thinking goes, assemble their codes with the same wishful thinking and misunderstanding that the ancient alchemists had when mixing their magic potions.
It’s true that we have little fundamental understanding of the inner workings of self-learning algorithms, or of the limits of their applications. These new forms of AI are very different from traditional computer codes that can be understood line by line. Instead, they operate within a black box, seemingly unknowable to humans and even to the machines themselves.
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The Metals Company wants to try, but opposition is fierce
Reeling from a crushing shortage of semiconductor chips for vehicles, carmakers also face another looming crisis: producing enough batteries to drive the global pivot towards electric vehicles.
The supply of metals like cobalt, copper, lithium, and nickel needed for batteries is already shaky, and soaring demand for the hundreds of millions of batteries in the coming decades is likely to trigger shortage and high prices.
Some companies want to harvest metallic treasures from the sea. Strewn across large swaths of ocean plains some 5,000 meters deep are potato-like lumps called polymetallic nodules rich in metals and rare-earth elements critical for batteries and electronics. Nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), which stretches between Mexico and Hawaii, are estimated to contain more cobalt and nickel than there are in deposits on land.
The Metals Company (previously DeepGreen Metals) in Vancouver expects to be the first to commercially produce metals from these nodules by 2024. And CEO Gerard Barron is confident they can do this without harming critical subsea ecosystems.
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New research has found that the electrical charge created by visiting bumblebees stimulates some flowers to release more of their sweet-smelling scent. This is the first time a plant has been shown to use the presence of pollinators as a cue to emit more of its attractive perfume—increasing its chances of being visited.
The tiny electrical charge carried by bees is thought to help pollen stick to them during flight but the team of researchers from the University of Bristol, Rothamsted Research, and Cardiff University found that it can also announce their presence to the flowers they visit.
According to lead author, Dr. Clara Montgomery, who was funded by the BBSRC, the trait possibly evolved in plants to maximize the effectiveness of the attractive chemicals they release.
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From reactors at coal plants to hydrogen production and potential cross-border collaboration, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm is seeking new roles for U.S. nuclear power.
The Biden administration’s top energy official said the nuclear industry should broaden its business case beyond power markets in order to ensure its place in a carbon-free economy.
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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and collaborators proposed a new mechanism by which nuclear waste could spread in the environment.
The new findings, that involve researchers at Penn State and Harvard Medical School, have implications for nuclear waste management and environmental chemistry. The research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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High-impact events, such as pandemics, extreme weather, and trade disputes, put U.S. national security and long-term economic competitiveness at risk.
McLean, Va., and Bedford, Mass., Aug. 18, 2021—The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call to invest in pandemic preparedness and response for the good of society. To enhance our national security for this and other high-impact events, MITRE has published a “10-Point Action Plan: Sustaining a Biopharma Industrial Base for a More Secure Nation.” This action plan addresses policy, program, and financing recommendations to strengthen and sustain a biopharma and technology industrial base to mitigate national, economic, and health security risks against biological and geopolitical threats.
The action plan—developed by MITRE in consultation with former government officials, industry experts, and academics—directly addresses deficiencies laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic in the way government manages the biopharma industrial base. This key part of our economy is a critical capability needed for the nation to be able to access medical countermeasures, essential medicines, and medical supplies in a time of crisis.
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Alibaba builds their own qubits, Baidu remains quantum hardware-agnostic
China and the US are in a race to conquer quantum computing, which promises to unleash the potential of artificial intelligence and give the owner all-seeing, code-breaking powers.
But there is a race within China itself among companies trying to dominate the space, led by tech giants Alibaba and Baidu.
Like their competitors IBM, Google, Honeywell, and D-Wave, both Chinese companies profess to be developing "full stack" quantum businesses, offering access to quantum computing through the cloud coupled with their own suite of algorithms, software, and consulting services.
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Finding use cases that work on today’s quantum computers is an important step to prove the value of quantum computing. Now a team of researchers from Cambridge Quantum and Nippon Steel report an important advance in that direction.
In a paper published on the pre-print server ArXiv, the team said they were able to accurately simulate hydrogen and iron using algorithms and noise mitigation techniques that could be run on today’s quantum computers. Prior to this, most experiments for material discovery run on today’s machines focused on molecules.
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What are the unique aspects of aerospace engineering that make it different from other industries?
The world of aerospace involves a degree of perfectionism that is not inherent to most industries. Safety is a critical factor when it comes to aviation design, and components must be manufactured in accordance with the highest standards of accuracy and precision. Unlike a bracket that may be designed for a consumer good (e.g., a washing machine), the exact same bracket could have the potential for devastating consequences if it were to malfunction within an aerospace application. Planes need to last for decades—with constant exposure to the elements, including heat, rain, snow and lightning—and must hold up during pressurized cycles mid-air.
Weight ratios are another consideration paramount to all things aerospace. When different components are put together, the weight of the assembly must be mitigated so that the aircraft is as light as possible. This often leads to designers converting multiple assemblies into a single component with complex geometries.
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There are grave problems with the transition to clean energy power
Next month world leaders will gather at the cop26 summit, saying they mean to set a course for net global carbon emissions to reach zero by 2050. As they prepare to pledge their part in this 30-year endeavour, the first big energy scare of the green era is unfolding before their eyes. Since May the price of a basket of oil, coal and gas has soared by 95%. Britain, the host of the summit, has turned its coal-fired power stations back on, American petrol prices have hit $3 a gallon, blackouts have engulfed China and India, and Vladimir Putin has just reminded Europe that its supply of fuel relies on Russian goodwill.
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Phase 1 clinical trials have begun on a candidate that could work against a wide range of flu viruses
Talk about the best of times and the worst of times. This bumper year for vaccines is overshadowed only by the devastation that unfolded in their absence, and by the urgency with which their manufacture and distribution still needs to happen. I’m talking about the vaccines against Sars-CoV-2, of course (controversially overlooked in the Nobel prizes, partly on technicalities that one feels might have been waived). But now there’s also a vaccine against malaria, an affliction that currently kills around 400,000 people annually in sub-Saharan Africa. The indirect effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in disrupting prevention and treatment of malaria there might kill more people than the virus itself. So the decision to start using the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline to protect children against malaria is deeply heartening.
But in all that excitement, another potentially transformative development in vaccines has been somewhat overlooked. One of the laissez-faire objections to efforts to control the spread of Sars-CoV-2 is that we routinely accept thousands of deaths from influenza every year, so why worry so much about a few thousand more? But Martin McKee of the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine has suggested to me that this is the wrong way round to look at it: we shouldn’t accept so many flu deaths, and indeed we try not to.
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Mitre recently announced it’s launched two innovation organizations: one for critical infrastructure, the other for public health data. The aim is to improve its focus on cybersecurity threats and find new approaches to public health challenges.
Both the Cyber Infrastructure Protection Innovation Center and Clinical Insights Innovation Cell fall under Mitre Labs, which was established last year for applied science and advanced technology research to shape the future of U.S. scientific and economic leadership.
Charles Clancy, senior vice president and general manager of Mitre Labs, explained the two additions will support Mitre with improving its partnership with critical infrastructure organizations and entities tasked with genomic data research to better “tackle the problems of infectious disease and the promise of precision medicine.”
The Clinical Insights Innovation Cell will work with public and private sector stakeholders to tackle critical healthcare challenges, while providing clinical and data science leadership and insight and AI approaches to the industry’s biggest challenges.
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There's even a potential target, which is expected to get booted toward the sun in 2063.
A few decades from now, humanity could get an up-close look at a comet blazing to life for the first time.
In a new study, researchers investigated the dynamics of the Centaur population, a group of icy rocks orbiting the sun near Jupiter and Saturn. The Centaurs are so named because they're hybrids of a sort, sharing some characteristics with both asteroids and comets.
Scientists believe that Centaurs were born in the giant-planet realm but have spent most of their lives in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of frigid bodies beyond Neptune's orbit. Gravitational interactions sent them out there long ago and also brought them back again relatively recently; Centaurs' orbits are unstable, so they likely haven't been in their current position for more than a few million years.
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Strain-engineered electrocatalyst becomes up to 50% more active in hydrogen evolution and methanol oxidation reactions
Using phosphorus atoms as removable spacers, scientists have fine-tuned the strain in a platinum electrocatalyst’s crystal lattice. Inducing different amounts of tension or compression dramatically changes the catalyst’s activity, more than doubling it in some cases.
In 2017, researchers led by Mingshang Jin of Xi’an Jiaotong University in China and Yadong Yin of University of California, Riverside, in the US developed a protocol to insert a tunable number of phosphorus atoms into the crystal lattice of a palladium nanocube, creating voids between the palladium atoms, thereby increasing the lattice spacing. This process could be reversed by heating the nanocube in nitrogen to drive out the phosphorus.
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Stacks of atomically thin sheets of molybdenum disulfide both move and block heat
Packing transistors close together raises the problem of heat frying the devices. Now scientists have developed an artificial material that is one of the best ever at conducting heat in one direction while keeping that heat insulated from its surroundings in other directions. The research might one day help microchips grow more powerful without breaking from overheating.
As electronics continue to miniaturize, greater amounts of heat are getting produced in a given space, which makes heat control a key challenge in electronic design. "If your computer or laptop overheats, it can be a safety issue," says study lead author Shi En Kim, a molecular engineer at the University of Chicago.
Recent advances in heat management include so-called anisotropic thermal conductors. In these materials, heat flows more quickly in one direction than in others.
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A new survey of large corporations shows the pandemic has driven home the need for innovation, while demonstrating just how hard it is to do.
Why it matters: In an exponential age, companies that can keep successfully innovating can reap outsized rewards, while those that fail, risk being left permanently behind.
What's happening: Software company Wellspring surveyed 300 high-level executives at $1 billion-plus revenue companies in the U.S. and U.K. about how the pandemic affected their innovation operations, and it shared the results first with Axios.
- 60% of the respondents reported they expected their corporate innovation budgets were expected to increase out of the pandemic, while just 10% expected budgets to be cut.
- "The pandemic highlighted the need for science," says Robert Lowe, Wellspring's CEO and co-founder. "But there's also a lot of innovation around how companies think about what they do and how they re-engage with customers."
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The new guide offers planners an encyclopaedia of proven options to help cool cities. The guide’s 80 supporting case studies and examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategies outlined and can help cities find an approach best suited to their unique contexts.
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As motors become smaller and more efficient, new challenges in bonding technology have surfaced. Some of the main applications of adhesives in electric motors involve joining magnets, shafts and rotors, and stators and housings. A progressive reduction in motor size leads to tightened manufacturing tolerances, which drives up costs. Established joining methods, such as mechanical clamping or “bandaging” of magnets, are reaching their limits in terms of motor function and the production process. Consequently, they are being replaced by magnet bonding adhesives.
Adhesives have certain advantages over conventional joining methods: They compensate for tighter manufacturing tolerances, prevent fretting or contact corrosion, and provide impact resistance, which is essential for withstanding the high dynamic forces of electric motors. Adhesives’ vibration-damping characteristics reduce noise and provide an overall more pleasing acoustic environment.
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A California-based startup called Brimstone Energy has patented a new process that reduces the emissions in Portland cement (the most commonly used type) to zero. Used with renewable energy, the process is actually carbon negative, meaning that cement could go from being a climate problem to a solution.
Energy is one part of the problem in traditional cement manufacturing, since it runs on fossil fuels and involves heating up a kiln to more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. But even if cement companies powered the entire process with renewable energy, there’s still a fundamental challenge because of the chemistry. “You start with a rock called limestone, and limestone is solidified CO2, basically,” says Cody Finke, cofounder and CEO of Brimstone, whose financial backers include Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures. When limestone, or calcium carbonate, is heated up to high temperatures, it creates lime, an ingredient in cement. But a huge amount of CO2 is released at the same time.
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The impressive performance of perovskites is surprising. The typical model for an excellent semiconductor is a very ordered structure, but the array of different chemical elements combined in perovskites creates a much 'messier' landscape.
This heterogeneity causes defects in the material that lead to nanoscale 'traps', which reduce the photovoltaic performance of the devices. But despite the presence of these defects, perovskite materials still show efficiency levels comparable to their silicon alternatives.
Combining a series of new microscopy techniques, the group present a complete picture of the nanoscale chemical, structural and optoelectronic landscape of these materials, that reveals the complex interactions between these competing factors and ultimately, shows which comes out on top.
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The chemicals sector is the largest industrial user of oil and gas but it has the third-largest carbon footprint – behind steel and cement – because only about half of the fossil fuels that the industry consumes are burned for their energy. The rest is used as feedstock for products such as plastics with the emissions released only when these products reach the end of their lives, for example, when waste plastic packaging or an old mattress is incinerated.
Lowering the industry’s emissions is possible but technically daunting. Plus this large, complex industry, which supports millions of jobs worldwide, has significant political and economic clout. “They’ve become a bit of an untouchable sector for many politicians,” said Jan-Justus Andreas, who leads industrial policy at the Norwegian environmental non-profit Bellona Europa.
Yet the chemicals industry is finding itself increasingly under scrutiny – both from nations that need to meet ambitious emissions reduction targets and from researchers, scientists and campaigners calling on the industry to cut its polluting products. |
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Engineers spend much of their time absorbed in the technical aspects of problems, whether they’re designing the next generation of smartphones or building a subway.
As recent news stories attest, this technocentric approach has some critical limitations, and the result can end up harming rather than helping society.
For example, artificial intelligence algorithms designed by software engineers to promote user engagement turn out to undermine democracy and promote hate speech. Pulse oximeters, key tools in diagnosing COVID-19, work better on light skin than dark. Power plants and engines, which have enabled much of the “progress” seen since the Industrial Revolution, have fueled climate change. |
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Community work enhances a scientist’s skills, whatever career stage they’re at
The antipodean shift around me has led to some cognitive dissonance over the years and resulted in a steep and tumultuous learning curve. However, I can adamantly confirm that I have never been so supported in science community work, and that its benefits to my technical work are immeasurable. As I pointed out in the society interview, great leaders and team workers appreciate the broader picture of how their team fits in with other departments and the wider world. Now, leaders regularly ask to reap the benefits of external groups I’m in, for collaborations or entry-level hiring.
Since moving into industry, I’m glad to have returned to community work. It is enjoyable, occasionally involves interesting travel, and most importantly, results in positive change. In my first couple of working years I got particular benefit from working with cross-industrial chemists, which allowed me to learn how pharma functions and what varied at other companies. Likewise, working alongside academics has led to collaborations that may not otherwise have been considered. I believe that no matter their career stage, scientists should be supported in giving back.
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Common experience tells us that oil and water do not mix. Yet, it turns out that they can mix when oil is dispersed as small droplets in water. This strange behavior has long vexed scientists because there is no explanation for it. A team of EPFL and ICTP scientists have studied this question using novel optical technology and discovered the mechanism by which these two neutral and immiscible compounds can in fact mix together and form emulsions. The answer lies in the electrical charge distribution at the interface.
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Does your company want to work with UChicago/PME?
Different ways to explore interactions with the PME:
- Senior design projects
- Internships (undergraduate and graduate students)
- Materials characterization/device fabrication facilities
- Participation in FORUM/Public events
- Give an industry seminar on your job/company/career path!
- Licensing opportunities (I'll connect you with the Polsky center)
- Do you want to do more computational/AI work in your product R&D?
- Ask Felix!
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Scientists based in Switzerland have developed a new metric for determining the environmental sustainability of chemical products. Of 492 widely-used chemicals evaluated with the new metric, the majority were judged to be unsustainable.
Earth’s carrying capacity can be described as a set of nine biophysical limits, or planetary boundaries, that include climate change, biogeochemical flows and stratospheric ozone depletion. While life cycle impact assessment is a widely used method for understanding the environmental burdens of chemicals and fuels, standard methods don’t consider these planetary boundaries so fail to accurately quantify a chemical’s absolute environmental sustainability.
Researchers have therefore sought to develop absolute environmental sustainability assessments (AESA) to determine whether a chemical exceeds its share of the Earth’s ecological capacity by accounting for planetary boundaries.
The new metric developed by Gonzalo Guillén-Gosálbez, Javier Pérez-Ramírez and Victor Tulus from ETH Zurich is a multi-factor AESA method and they used it to evaluate 492 chemicals. ‘It is an exhaustive assessment of pretty much the main chemicals that you can find in the market,’ explains Pérez-Ramírez. |
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PARKING - You are welcome to park for free on certain streets if you can find it. The closest parking lot to the Eckhardt Research Center is the North parking lot located at the SE corner of 55th St and South Ellis Ave.
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Acknowledgements: Thank you to Dominique Jaramillo for her enormous effort in helping to put this newsletter together!
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