Summer Seminar Series 2022

New Light: Rising Stars in Energy and the Environment spotlights a diverse selection of researchers across disciplines working on cutting-edge approaches to solve society’s most pressing problems in energy and the environment. This year, two hybrid seminars will be held in Maeder 103, with two speakers giving 20-minute presentations on each date.

Wednesday, July 13

12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.

Fernando Temprano-Coleto

Transport processes in modern environmental challenges

Temprano-Coleto earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2021 from the University of California Santa Barbara. His doctoral research focused on the effect of surfactants on the performance of superhydrophobic surfaces, coatings designed to reduce fluid drag and improve the energy efficiency in areas such as maritime transportation or pipeline hydraulics. As a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Temprano-Coleto is working with Professors Howard Stone, Sujit Datta, and Jason Ren to develop techniques based on diffusiophoresis for the manipulation of colloids. These methods are targeted towards the characterization of microplastics, as well as their efficient remediation from natural water.

Read Temprano-Coleto's abstract

Many of our most pressing environmental problems are critically mediated by transport processes. A quantitative understanding of mass, charge, momentum and energy transport, usually manifested through various competing mechanisms, is therefore critical in the effective design of viable technological solutions. I will discuss three specific applications in which transport plays a key role: (1) carbon capture in liquid-infused micro-textures, (2) the sustainable extraction of minerals (such as Lithium) using differential evaporation, and (3) water remediation through the manipulation of suspended solids with concentration gradients (an effect known as diffusiophoresis). A combination of theory and model experiments is used to discern which specific mechanisms (convection, reaction, diffusion, electromigration…) are dominant in each of these cases. This leads to quantitative predictions that widen our fundamental understanding of the natural world, also bridging the gap with the real-world applications that our society needs to preserve the environment.

Holly Caggiano

Building coalitions for renewable energy futures

Caggiano earned her Ph.D. from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. Her dissertation research, chaired by Drs. Rachael Shwom and Cara Cuite, explored social-behavioral drivers of household resource consumption at the food-energy-water nexus. As a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Caggiano is working under the mentorship of professors Elke Weber and Chris Greig to identify pathways for cross-partisan public support for large-scale renewable energy deployment projects in key communities in the U.S. Motivated by ACEE’s Rapid Switch research effort and Net-Zero America study, this research contributes to deep decarbonization efforts to mitigate global climate change.

Read Caggiano's abstract

The social dimensions of a renewable energy transition in the United States are a subject of rapidly progressing research that explores mechanisms driving both individual and collective actions necessary to build momentum for change. Despite these efforts, sociopolitical barriers to large-scale energy infrastructure deployment persist as a major obstacle to reaching national emissions goals. Even as polls find overwhelming public support for renewable energy technology across the US, individual projects are often contested within communities, necessitating coordination between diverse groups of actors with different goals and values. This talk will introduce preliminary findings from case-study research on large-scale solar PV development, exploring both individual preferences and shared narratives that influence decision making about local and state-level energy systems change. This research effort explores opportunities for creative models of stakeholder engagement and community participation in energy systems change that prioritize procedural and distributional justice.

Wednesday, July 20

12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.

Julie Euvrard

Organic solar technologies: How does molecular arrangement determine the fate of charge transport?

Euvrard is a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, working with professors Prof. Barry Rand and Prof. Antoine Kahn in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research focuses on emerging semiconducting materials for solar energy applications, including perovskites and organic semiconductors. In particular, Euvrard is using advanced Hall and carrier-resolved photo-Hall techniques, new and powerful tools that hold promise to rapidly access fundamental properties of materials for use in energy harvesting devices. Prior to her current position, Euvrard was a postdoctoral associate in the group of Prof. David Mitzi at Duke University, focusing on perovskite materials for photovoltaic applications. Euvrard earned a PhD at CEA Grenoble, France, and University Lille I, France, where she studied electrical doping in organic semiconductors.

Read Euvrard's abstract

With the goal of reducing solar energy costs further, new materials such as organic semiconductors are considered as a replacement for silicon. In this presentation, we will explore some fundamental properties of organic semiconductors that determine solar cell efficiency. Indeed, efficiency gains cannot be achieved without an in depth understanding of the underlying physics, the key to fine tweaking and optimization. In particular, we will determine how molecular arrangement, determined by “order” and “packing”, impacts the fate of charge transport. How ordered your desk is may influence how efficiently you work, and your state of mind. More importantly, however, is the way that folders are arranged (packed) on a desktop: files from the same projects are best placed together. The same idea holds true for organic semiconductors. Crystallinity (order) is an important lever to improve the efficiency of charge carriers traveling in the material, yet the way molecules pack in the crystalline phase is more important. We observe that, by tuning order and packing in organic semiconductors, the transport mechanism gradually evolves between two cases. Our results therefore provide guidelines for the design of new and efficient organic solar materials.

Allyson McGaughey

Scalable polymer brushes: new materials for water and resource recovery

McGaughey earned her Ph.D. in environmental engineering in 2020 from the University of Southern California, where she studied membrane separation processes for wastewater reuse and desalination. Her doctoral research focused on the relationships between material properties and performance for membrane distillation, a separation process that is promising for resource recovery from high-salinity waste streams.

As a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, McGaughey is working with professors Rodney Priestley and Z. Jason Ren to develop advanced polymer materials for resource recovery and water treatment processes, including robust antifouling materials that can improve performance and reduce energy consumption.

Read McGaughey's abstract

The recovery and reuse of freshwater and other valuable resources from waste streams is increasingly urgent as we seek to achieve a sustainable, circular water economy. While membrane separation processes have enabled energy-efficient separations for many applications, membrane fouling has hindered water and resource recovery – especially from challenging, high-concentration wastewaters. Recently, polymer brush materials have emerged as an attractive option to achieve ultra-high fouling resistance with ultra-thin, durable surface layers. However, current brush fabrication methods are complex and oxygen-sensitive, with limited potential for commercial scale-up. In this presentation, we demonstrate scalable fabrication of fouling-resistant polymer brushes on membrane substrates for the first time. We systematically investigate the relationships between fabrication methods, material properties, and performance. Our results provide new, fundamental understanding of material design to enable water and resource recovery from more and more challenging waste streams.

Princeton University

New Light: Rising Stars in Energy and the Environment