CESR Newsletter, Issue 13

Northwestern University Associate Professor Sera Young and UNESCO are working with Gallup to expand surveys that include the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) scale to 31 countries in Africa, Asia, Central and South America. Gallup data collection is underway. With nationally representative surveys in all of these countries, including India, China and Brazil, researchers will now be able to benchmark water insecurity among roughly half the world's adult population.

FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

NU-MRSEC Seed Projects

On behalf of NU-MRSEC Director, Mark Hersam, the Northwestern University Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (NU-MRSEC) is currently soliciting proposals for Seed projects focused on developing and characterizing new materials with novel properties.

NU-MRSEC is an NSF-funded interdisciplinary group of scientists and engineers working collaboratively in a broad range of materials research areas. The Center’s researchers generally work in Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRGs), but new investigators are often first funded through Seed projects. Seed funding is designed to be short-term, thus allowing investigators to procure sufficient preliminary results to attract long-term funding either within the MRSEC (e.g., joining a pre-existing IRG or nucleating a new IRG) or from other external funding sources. Since the NU-MRSEC is planning to release a call for new IRGs in mid-to-late 2021, preference will be given to Seed proposals that can articulate a compelling plan for gathering preliminary results in support of a new IRG. For more information about the Center and its current research areas, please visit the NU-MRSEC website.

The Center is now inviting proposals for Seed project funding in materials-related research (see attached application). Seed applications should propose frontier materials research that enhances and diversifies the overall research direction of the NU-MRSEC. The proposal should clearly explain the nature of the project and how it can evolve into a new IRG. Seed projects typically receive support for one graduate student for two years, but this support can be spread among multiple investigators (e.g., through a co-advised graduate student).

Please note that successful IRG teams embrace diversity from all perspectives including, but not limited to, gender, ethnicity, age, and seniority. In addition, successful IRG teams are interdisciplinary in the broadest sense of the word including a mix of science and engineering, theory and experiment, and departmental affiliation. New IRGs need to be distinct from the currently funded IRGs within the NU-MRSEC and other MRSECs around the country. For more information on the MRSEC program nationwide, please see: https://mrsec.org/

Since MRSECs are funded by the NSF Division of Materials Research (DMR), all MRSEC research has to fall within the purview of NSF DMR, which is delineated here.

The application deadline for Seed proposals is Friday, November 13, 2020. Project funding is expected to begin in Winter 2021.

APPLY

LIBRARY HIGHLIGHTS

The CESR website hosts a library of reports and high-level journal articles on topics related to engineering sustainability and resilience. Currently, these documents are grouped in areas including carbon capture and utilization, climate change and resilience, electricity and energy, energy storage, sustainable industry and manufacturing, and transportation. We place new resources in the folder as they are released and will highlight one resource per newsletter.

Decarbonization of industry is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Rissman et al. (2020) provide an overview of the technologies and policies that could contribute most to industrial decarbonization.  The article examines industries including the cement industry, iron and steel production, and chemicals production and summarizes emerging technology for decarbonization.  It also reviews adoption of carbon capture and sequestration as a GHG mitigation measure and covers topics such as a transition to using increasing amounts of renewably-sourced hydrogen and electricity in industry.  For students or post-docs looking for an overview of industry and how different decarbonization strategies fit, this paper will be a great resource.