Outreach & Service

A SCIENTIST: THE CIVIL SERVANT

In the modern world, we view scientists as civil servants, which necessitates giving service back to society for investing in our work. While science is purely the pursuit of objective knowledge, our motivation for doing research is inherently subjective: fighting climate change. Climate change disproportionately harms low-income communities, so we need an intersectional approach to solve this problem.

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Despite claims of valuing diversity and underserved students, many voices have elocuted on the exclusionary and hostile environment of academia and academic science. We acknowledge that science has been used to hurt and marginalize communities (especially Blacks, Indigenious, and socioeconomically-disadvantaged people) throughout much of the world history. We also acknowledge the exclusion of women in much of the scientific settings worldwide. Therefore, we believe it is our duty to provide opportunities for scientific growth to underrepresented groups while also developing a supportive, inclusive, and friendly community for such groups. To this end, we are involved in several media which we contribute time and resources to promote diversity in the sciences:

  • High School and Undergraduate Students' Mentorship: We encourage high school and undergraduate students who are interested in joining the Electrobuffs group to contact us with inquiries about possible mentorship opportunities. The Electrobuffs team members are always happy to mentor interested students regardless of their past experiences. We have mentored both undergraduate and high school students successfully.

  • Denver Public School System: Coordinated by Paige Brimley, we are involved in mentorship and scientific engagement with several high schools in the Denver school system.

  • STEM Routes and the BOLD Center: This is our main hub for research projects and outreach events at CU Boulder. STEM Routes and the BOLD Center both work to provide opportunities, mentoring, and guidance to underrepresented students at CU. Please apply for a research position through the STEM Routes website, or directly contact Paige Brimley. Sign up for the BOLD newsletter to get alerted about upcoming events!

  • Graduate Assistant in the Areas of National Need (GAANN): We have several students who are GAANN fellows, a program is designed to train graduate students and future scientists and engineers in research, coursework, and teaching in a proposed area of national need.

  • Cientifico Latino: Engaging in mentoring to help undergraduate, graduate, and professional students access resources on scholarships, fellowships, and blog posts on professional development. Visit Cientifico Latino for more info.

  • Outreach at NREL: Initiated by Nate Nesbitt, we help develop undergraduate engagement programs at NREL to incorporate underserved communities into the state-of-the-art research going on at those facilities.

 

Resources:

A RENEWABLE VISION

An IPCC figure showing two sub-figures. The top figure shows the carbon budget and emissions and the bottom one shows the cumulative CO2 emissions and warming until 2050. The takeaway is that we have a limited carbon budget in the range of 500-1100 Gt-CO2 if we were to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5-2.0˚C. Without abatement, we will most likely reach and exceed these limits.
Anthropogenic climate change has already caused drastic changes to our planet and climate. Curtailing these emissions and capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide is the only path to producing a habitable planet. Even with the transition to renewable energies, climate change will still be exacerbated by humanity's consumption of fossil fuel products. Carbon capture and remediation are necessary to return to pre-anthropogenic climate stability, outlined in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Our research group is passionately focused on science that can develop technologies to aid these efforts. All of these research efforts are in particular focused on scalable technology and technology at scale, bridging the gap between academia and industry in renewable energy.

 

The figure on the right shows the remaining carbon budget if we were to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5-2.0˚C. With constant 2019 CO2 emissions, the 1.5˚C carbon budget will most likely be consumed. With no additional abatement, the remaining 2˚C carbon budget is also expected to be consumed. This shows how important carbon capture and remediation to mitigating climate change effects. The bottom sub-figure demonstrates different scenarios to limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5-2.0˚C, with SSP1-1.9 and SSP1-2.6 scenarios considering Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies (e.g., Bioenergy with CO2 Capture and Storage (BECCS) and Direct Air CO2 Capture and Storage (DACCS)) to cover for hard-to-abate CO2 emissions. Our group's effort is focused on studying DACC (without storage) technologies, renewably-driven electrolysis technologies, and their industrially-relevant integration. 

 

 

SCIENCE AT SCALE

A figure showing the areas necessary for a renewably-driven carbon capture and conversion process that integrates direct air capture with CO2 electrolysis to produce 10,000 tons of methanol per day.
On the left is a case study of the necessary scale to achieve a full carbon capture and conversion facility powered by renewable energy to produce 10,000 tons/day of methanol from electrochemistry, based on the current state-of-the-art technology. An enormous gap exists between the current pilot plant technology and what is necessary to realize these systems. Part of the problem contributing to this is academia's aversion to discussing science at scale: understanding chemical and physical changes that occur when scaling the size of newly developed technology, and improving their durability. We hope to bridge that gap by doing exciting science that can inform both benchtop researchers and industrial partners. Science and society need these partnerships to flourish to bring about the technology of tomorrow, today.