Sustainability
Securing the planet for future generations
“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health.”
— UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
“Climate change is the existential threat to humanity. Unchecked, it is going to actually bake this planet. This is not hyperbole. It’s real. And we have a moral obligation.”
— U.S. President Joe Biden
Sustainable engineering initiative
Avoidance, Mitigation, Remediation, and Adaptation: The keys to tackling climate change and environmental contamination
Surf the web on solar lightwaves
Could the internet be driven by climate-friendly “natural intelligence”? A global network of solar-powered servers shows how.
Harness the sun
Shifting the sun
A team of researchers led by Eray Aydil in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department is tackling one facet of solar cells’ inefficiency — the nature of light itself.
André Taylor receives DOE Solar Energy Technology Office Award
Professor André Taylor was selected to receive a $300,000 award from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office to advance solar photovoltaics research and development to help eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector.
Learn from the waters
Below the seafloor
Tandon researchers are exploring gas hydrate crystallization in nanopores to understand the impact of warming oceans on methane emissions.
The organisms helping clean up a Superfund site
Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hénaff has been uncovering a community of extremophiles, a type of microorganism capable of living in extreme conditions that have the ability to break down the pernicious waste, at the bottom of Brooklyn’s Gowanus canal.
Protecting communities from flooding
A new data dashboard reporting street-level flooding in NYC gives government, responders, the public, and researchers real-time information on rising waters.
Goodbye Stick, Hello Carrot
In an op-ed, Professor Miguel Modestino gave his advice to the United States’ government to help incentivize industry to convert to sustainable energy.
Confronting the Anthropocene
A trio of students presented research at the annual Association for Environmental Studies and Science conference.