Events

May

10

Northwestern Engineering's Dean's Seminar Series presents: Arun Majumdar

McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

2:00 PM

EVENT DETAILS

Energy, Climate, and Sustainability: The Defining Issue of the 21st Century

The 20th century was marked by dramatic innovations in medical care, transportation, food production, communications, computing, aerospace technology, and the built environment. This has led to remarkable improvements in our quality of life, brought billions of people out of poverty, and supported a four-fold increase in global population and seven-fold increase in GDP per capita. The fundamental infrastructure to enable these historic changes was energy, but the use of fossil fuels and the associated greenhouse gas emissions have made last century’s approach unsustainable.

We are now witnessing a global economy undergo a once-in-a-century shift to chart a sustainable course. Will this happen fast enough to address climate change? What are the innovations needed? Will it happen uniformly around the world? What are the roles of academic institutions, government, business, and non-profits? Do we have the domestic and global institutions to support this massive endeavor? And could the current economic and health crisis of COVID-19 play a role in this global transformation?

This talk will explore these issues and take stock of the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Presenter: Arun Majumdar
Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor at Stanford University, a faculty member of the department of mechanical engineering

From 2009 to 2012, Majumdar served as the founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, and from March 2011 to June 2012, he was the Acting Under Secretary of Energy. After leaving Washington, Majumdar was the vice president for energy at Google. Majumdar is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also served as the vice chairman of the advisory board to former US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, was a science envoy for the US Department of State, and serves on the advisory board of numerous energy businesses and non-profits.

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) and the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience (CESR).

Register Now

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TIME Monday, May 10, 2021 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

CONTACT Northwestern Engineering Events northwestern-engineering-events@northwestern.edu EMAIL

CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

Sep

24

Fall 2024 Classes Begin (No Northwestern Monday in Fall)

University Academic Calendar

All Day

EVENT DETAILS

Fall 2024 Classes Begin (No Northwestern Monday in Fall)

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TIME Tuesday, September 24, 2024

CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL

CALENDAR University Academic Calendar

Sep

27

EES Seminar- Nanqing Zhou

McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)

2:00 PM A230, Technological Institute

EVENT DETAILS

Title: Production of Nanoplastics and Bioavailable Carbons by Wastewater Comamonas

Abstract: Comamonadacae bacteria are enriched on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microplastics in wastewaters and urban rivers, but the PET-degrading mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we investigated these mechanisms with Comamonas testosteroni KF-1, a wastewater isolate, by combining microscopy, spectroscopy, proteomics, protein modeling, and genetic engineering. Compared to minor dents on PET films, scanning electron microscopy revealed significant fragmentation of PET pellets, resulting in 3.5-fold increase in the abundance of small nanoparticles (< 100 nm) during 30-day cultivation. Infrared spectroscopy captured primarily hydrolytic cleavage in the fragmented pellet particles. Solution analysis further demonstrated double hydrolysis of a PET oligomer, bis-(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate, to the bioavailable monomer terephthalate. Supplementation with acetate, a common wastewater co-substrate, promoted cell growth and PET fragmentation. Of the multiple hydrolases encoded in the genome, intracellular proteomics detected only one, which was found in both acetate-only and PET-only conditions. Homology modeling of this hydrolase structure illustrated substrate binding analogous to reported PET hydrolases despite dissimilar sequences. Mutants lacking this hydrolase gene were incapable of PET oligomer hydrolysis and had 25% decrease in PET fragmentation; re-insertion of the gene restored both functions. Thus, we have identified constitutive production of a key PET-degrading hydrolase in wastewater Comamonas, which can be exploited for plastics bioconversion.

Bio: Dr. Nanqing Zhou is a postdoctoral scholar working with Prof. Ludmilla Aristilde at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. Dr. Zhou obtained her B.S. in Environmental Science and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China. She then obtained a doctoral degree in Marine Biosciences from the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on applying multi-omics approaches to unravel the metabolic network in biotechnologically relevant microbes using waste carbon sources.

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TIME Friday, September 27, 2024 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it

CONTACT Andrew Liguori andrew.liguori@northwestern.edu EMAIL

CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)

Sep

30

McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)

2:00 PM A230, Technological Institute

EVENT DETAILS

TBA

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TIME Friday, November 22, 2024 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it

CONTACT Andrew Liguori andrew.liguori@northwestern.edu EMAIL

CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)

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Events filtered by

Northwestern Engineering's Dean's Seminar Series presents: Arun Majumdar

Fall 2024 Classes Begin (No Northwestern Monday in Fall)

EES Seminar- Nanqing Zhou

Last day to add a class or change a section for Fall (Last day for tuition adjustment related to enrollment changes (to or from full-time). No reductions are made to bills for dropped or swapped classes after this date)

Achenbach Lecture- Vijay Kumar

CEE Department Happy Hour

EES Seminar- Anna Vincent

EES Seminar- John Fortner

EES Seminar- Satish Myneni

CEE Fall Career Fair

EES Seminar- Shushan Wu

EES Seminar- Jason Ren

EES Seminar- George Wells

EES Seminar- Ludmilla Aristilde

Related Links

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