CBE professor Lynn Loo, director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, says the dangers of climate change are so pressing that it’s time for all hands on deck to decarbonize the U.S. and global economies. She praises the issue awareness behind legislation introduced in Congress to implement a “Green New Deal,” but stresses that solar and wind technologies, by themselves, are not yet sufficient to fuel the nation. “We’re always racing against time,” explains Loo. “The power sector has to decarbonize very, very, very quickly.”

A new method to combat antibiotic resistance; a way to use computer science to limit misinformation; and a plan to better understand the impacts of land use and climate change on flooding are among 19 projects awarded Innovation Research Grants this year through the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Before engineers can build a reactor to produce electricity from fusion, they have to make the reactor’s walls able to withstand the heat and energetic particles from the reactions. It is a hellish environment and requires a very special material.