Exploratory Groups
Exploratory Groups are interdisciplinary research groups, including affiliates from across the university. These are emerging research areas in sustainability where ISF is involved in creating a coalition of faculty affiliates to tackle these challenges.
Renewable Energy
Our mission is to promote interdisciplinary collaborative research on renewable energy that relates in part to environmental sustainability. This includes topics from fundamental science, to engineering, to manufacturing, to social sciences, liberal arts, and policy.
Important research topics include new concepts for harvesting renewable energy resources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydrological, wave and tidal, and biological systems; growing commercially-relevant technologies including solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, and renewable fuels; important use cases such as agriculture, buildings, and vehicles; grid interconnection, stability, and storage; energy conservation and reuse; integration of artificial intelligence and other advanced computing technologies into the items above; social, environmental, and financial impacts of renewable energy manufacture, use, and recycling; societal acceptance of renewable energy; as well as renewable energy policy studies and recommendations.
ISF Lead: Peter Bermel (ECE)
Amazon Sustainability Research
The Amazon rainforest is globally recognized as one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, accounting for more than half of the total rainforest volume in the world, hence referred to as “the lungs of the planet”. Unfortunately, it faces constant threats from deforestation, illegal resource extraction, and climate change, among others. Indigenous communities’ ability to protect and manage their territories is often limited by a lack of economic alternatives and basic services.
The ASEG aims to create a multidisciplinary team composed of faculty, grad students, and staff who are interested in helping conserve the Amazon while empowering local, indigenous communities through various collaborative research initiatives.
The ASEG will identify research opportunities and joint research projects that will contribute to understanding the relationships between people and nature, identify resources and their side-streams grown/cultivated in the Amazon region, with potential for bioprocessing & biobusiness applications. Through international cooperation with local institutions and Amazon communities, our team can contribute towards establishing a sustainable approach to managing, evaluating, and utilizing local Amazon resources, while respecting the local communities’ culture, customs, traditions.
ISF Lead: Andrea Liceaga (FS)
Future Manufacturing
The Future and Advanced manufacturing exploratory group is an initiative to bring together diverse research groups at Purdue working on challenges related to the future and advanced manufacturing area. While there are specific areas of research needed to ensure scale up of advanced manufacturing and solving challenges for future manufacturing, a more cohesive effort is needed to ensure that the transitions are economical and sustainable. This group will provide a platform for these discussions and formulate a working paper series group to put Purdue at the forefront of leadership in formulating the solutions for emerging problems. We welcome members to join the group and work together in identifying the key emerging problems that need to be solved for sustainable growth of manufacturing to meet the demands and workforce development over the next 5 years in Indiana, Midwest and beyond. It cuts across many areas of research but not limited to:
- Process Systems Engineering
- Systems Scale Sustainability Modeling
- Safety and Hazards in Manufacturing Operations
- Disaster and Resilience for Manufacturing
- AI in Manufacturing
- Sensors and Data Science
- Supply Chains
- Education & Workforce Development
ISF Lead: Shweta Singh (SEE)
African Sustainability and Resilience (AFSURE)
AFSURE is a new interdisciplinary initiative of the Institute for a Sustainable Future (ISF) aimed at exploring research and development opportunities related to sustainability and resilience in Africa. By bringing together faculty and other researchers from across the University, the group provides a platform from which to advance cross-cutting solutions consistent with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.