Call Out: NSF ECO-CBET

There will be a call out meeting in MRGN 129 at 2 pm this Friday, 12/6, as well as an opportunity for people to meet and potentially connect with others in regards to the recent ECO-CBET call.

Webex information is also available - please contact Lynne Dahmen

Here is a short synopsis:

The Environmental Convergence Opportunities in Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (ECO-CBET) solicitation seeks to engage the research communities represented among the programmatic clusters of CBET - Chemical Process Systems, Engineering Biology and Health, Transport Phenomena, and Environmental Engineering and Sustainability - in the development of innovative, fundamentally driven approaches to tackle pressing environmental challenges. Projects are expected to advance and apply fundamental processes, mechanisms, and theories to yield systems-level understanding and tools. Highly collaborative projects that pair environmental engineering and sustainability experts with complementary researchers from other process science disciplines, e.g., heat and mass transfer, catalysis, biotechnology, process design and control, etc, are sought. Experts in manufacturing and/or social sciences may also provide unique perspectives that serve to expand the technological and societal impact of the research. The goals of the solicitation include:

- Encouraging new ways of thinking about environmental problems through atypical scientific collaborations and leveraging this diversity of perspectives to create innovative, holistic solutions;

- Integrating fundamental chemical process, transport, and bioengineering science with environmental engineering and sustainability research toward reducing and mitigating pollution and waste; and

- Training a future workforce prepared to develop and apply fundamental knowledge and approaches to solve environmental and sustainability problems.

The two primary areas of interest are:

Greenhouse Gas Mitigation – Transformative, high-risk/high-reward approaches are sought to economically and sustainably capture, contain, and/or convert greenhouse gases, such as CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons, from industrial process streams or directly from air.

Managing the Nitrogen Cycle – Transformative, high-risk/high-reward approaches are sought to prevent runoff and leaching of nitrates into drinking water reservoirs or into the ecosystems of receiving waters; to prevent denitrification of soil nitrogen by microorganisms and release of nitrous oxide (N2O) into the atmosphere; or to economically and more sustainably synthesize ammonia than current processes.