Entry Date:
October 19, 2016

Resources and Sustainability

Principal Investigator Ruben Juanes


Food, water, air, energy, materials. Civilization cannot survive without them. They are the resources that keep us functioning. We are looking to revolutionize those resources. We want them to be more accessible, a higher quality, more sustainable. We focus on natural and human-made resources, their extraction, generation, and interaction with the environment.

Key areas include:
(*) Water, e.g. the SMART Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling (CENSAM)
(*) Atmosphere & air quality, e.g.: Air pollution impacts on global crop yields; Regional hotspots where climate change may severely impact human habitability
(*) Food & agriculture, e.g.: Bacterial viruses as pathogen control agents in aquaculture systems; Gravity fingering during water infiltration in soil: Impact on the resilience of crops and vegetation in water-stressed ecosystems
(*) Energy, e.g.: Hydraulic Fracturing and Fracture Flow in Rocks; Reservoir-on-a-chip; Simulating Fracture in Geomaterials
(*) Material sourcing, e.g. Transforming animal waste to biobinder and bio-petroleum
(*) Coastal resilience, e.g.: Green Infrastructure: Vegetated Landscapes and Coastal Protection