This year’s Georgia Tech Sustainability Showcase, held March 4 – 8 in conjunction with the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Action and Awareness Week, was an opportunity for faculty, staff, students, and community partners to demonstrate the depth and breadth of sustainability research happening at Georgia Tech. It was hosted by the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems with partners from the Office of Sustainability, Strategic Energy Institute, Renewable Bioproducts Institute, Institute for People and Technology, Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, the Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education, The Exchange at Georgia Tech, and other campus partners.

The event featured lightning talk sessions, panel discussions, and an alumni keynote. Participants were afforded with an opportunity to meet their colleagues, learn about each other’s projects, and explore opportunities for collaboration. The lightning talk sessions were five-to-seven-minute presentations, without slides, meant to give the audience a broad view of the diversity of sustainability work underway at Georgia Tech in a short period of time. These talks covered a wide range of topics, reflecting the diverse interests and expertise within the Georgia Tech community.

Panel discussions included “Higher Education and SDG17: Partnerships for the Goals” with Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera, a panel on the Georgia Tech Climate Action Plan, and “Innovative Teaching with the U.N. SDGs: Examples From Georgia Tech Faculty.” There were also panels on research/community partnerships, and the role of philanthropy in sustainability research.

The alumni keynote was delivered by Andrew White, CE 2019, an Energy Equity and Environmental Justice Systems Researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He spoke about advancing energy equity through strategic collaborations among multiple stakeholders in the landscape of energy producers, distributors, and consumers.

The showcase demonstrated the Georgia Tech sustainability community’s passion and commitment to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals and the Institute’s mission to improve the human condition. It fostered a sense of community and shared purpose among attendees and participants.

The proceedings were recorded, and videos will begin to be uploaded to the BBISS YouTube channel in the coming weeks. More details about the Sustainability Showcase and the lineup of speakers and sessions can be found at https://sustainable.gatech.edu/showcase. Details about SDG Week and related events can be found at https://sustain.gatech.edu/sdg-week/.

Energy is everywhere, affecting everything, all the time. And it can be manipulated and converted into the kind of energy that we depend on as a civilization. But transforming this ambient energy (the result of gyrating atoms and molecules) into something we can plug into and use when we need it requires specific materials.

These energy materials — some natural, some manufactured, some a combination — facilitate the conversion or transmission of energy. They also play an essential role in how we store energy, how we reduce power consumption, and how we develop cleaner, efficient energy solutions.

“Advanced materials and clean energy technologies are tightly connected, and at Georgia Tech we’ve been making major investments in people and facilities in batteries, solar energy, and hydrogen, for several decades,” said Tim Lieuwen, the David S. Lewis Jr. Chair and professor of aerospace engineering, and executive director of Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute (SEI).

That research synergy is the underpinning of Georgia Tech Energy Materials Day (March 27), a gathering of people from academia, government, and industry, co-hosted by SEI, the Institute for Materials (IMat), and the Georgia Tech Advanced Battery Center. This event aims to build on the momentum created by Georgia Tech Battery Day, held in March 2023, which drew more than 230 energy researchers and industry representatives.

“We thought it would be a good idea to expand on the Battery Day idea and showcase a wide range of research and expertise in other areas, such as solar energy and clean fuels, in addition to what we’re doing in batteries and energy storage,” said Matt McDowell, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), and co-director, with Gleb Yushin, of the Advanced Battery Center.

Energy Materials Day will bring together experts from academia, government, and industry to discuss and accelerate research in three key areas: battery materials and technologies, photovoltaics and the grid, and materials for carbon-neutral fuel production, “all of which are crucial for driving the clean energy transition,” noted Eric Vogel, executive director of IMat and the Hightower Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

“Georgia Tech is leading the charge in research in these three areas,” he said. “And we’re excited to unite so many experts to spark the important discussions that will help us advance our nation’s path to net-zero emissions.”

Building an Energy Hub

Energy Materials Day is part of an ongoing, long-range effort to position Georgia Tech, and Georgia, as a go-to location for modern energy companies. So far, the message seems to be landing. Georgia has had more than $28 billion invested or announced in electric vehicle-related projects since 2020. And Georgia Tech was recently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the top public university for energy research.

Georgia has become a major player in solar energy, also, with the announcement last year of a $2.5 billion plant being developed by Korean solar company Hanwha Qcells, taking advantage of President Biden’s climate policies. Qcells’ global chief technology officer, Danielle Merfeld, a member of SEI’s External Advisory Board, will be the keynote speaker for Energy Materials Day.

“Growing these industry relationships, building trust through collaborations with industry — these have been strong motivations in our efforts to create a hub here in Atlanta,” said Yushin, professor in MSE and co-founder of Sila Nanotechnologies, a battery materials startup valued at more than $3 billion.

McDowell and Yushin are leading the battery initiative for Energy Materials Day and they’ll be among 12 experts making presentations on battery materials and technologies, including six from Georgia Tech and four from industry. In addition to the formal sessions and presentations, there will also be an opportunity for networking.

“I think Georgia Tech has a responsibility to help grow a manufacturing ecosystem,” McDowell said. “We have the research and educational experience and expertise that companies need, and we’re working to coordinate our efforts with industry.”

Marta Hatzell, associate professor of mechanical engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering, is leading the carbon-neutral fuel production portion of the event, while Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, assistant professor in MSE, is leading the photovoltaics initiative.

They’ll be joined by a host of experts from Georgia Tech and institutes across the country, “some of the top thought leaders in their fields,” said Correa-Baena, whose lab has spent years optimizing a semiconductor material for solar energy conversion.

“Over the past decade, we have been working to achieve high efficiencies in solar panels based on a new, low-cost material called halide perovskites,” he said. His lab recently discovered how to prevent the chemical interactions that can degrade it. “It’s kind of a miracle material, and we want to increase its lifespan, make it more robust and commercially relevant.”

While Correa-Baena is working to revolutionize solar energy, Hatzell’s lab is designing materials to clean up the manufacturing of clean fuels.

“We’re interested in decarbonizing the industrial sector, through the production of carbon-neutral fuels,” said Hatzell, whose lab is designing new materials to make clean ammonia and hydrogen, both of which have the potential to play a major role in a carbon-free fuel system, without using fossil fuels as the feedstock. “We’re also working on a collaborative project focusing on assessing the economics of clean ammonia on a larger, global scale.”

The hope for Energy Materials Day is that other collaborations will be fostered as industry’s needs and the research enterprise collide in one place — Georgia Tech’s Exhibition Hall — over one day. The event is part of what Yushin called “the snowball effect.”

“You attract a new company to the region, and then another,” he said. “If we want to boost domestic production and supply chains, we must roll like a snowball gathering momentum. Education is a significant part of that effect. To build this new technology and new facilities for a new industry, you need trained, talented engineers. And we’ve got plenty of those. Georgia Tech can become the single point of contact, helping companies solve the technical challenges in a new age of clean energy.”

Demand for critical minerals and rare earth elements is rapidly increasing as the world accelerates toward clean energy transitions. Concerns about price volatility, supply security, and geopolitics arise as reducing emissions and ensuring resilient and secure energy systems become increasingly crucial.  

 To address this important area, 45 participants from academia, government, industry, and national labs gathered at the University of Georgia for the inaugural Georgia partnerships for Essential Minerals (GEMs) Workshop. The workshop was the first in a series of critical mineral conversations planned by the collaborators of the workshop. The first GEMs Workshop focused on the critical mineral potential in Georgia’s kaolin mining industry.  

 Key workshop conveners included W. Crawford Elliott, associate professor of chemistry and geosciences at Georgia State University; Lee R. Lemke, secretary and executive vice president of the Georgia Mining Association; Paul A. Schroeder, professor in clay minerology at the University of Georgia; and Yuanzhi Tang, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. 

 Representatives from more than 20 companies, the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Environmental Protection Division, and Savannah River National Laboratory, as well as faculty members and students from Georgia’s three R1 universities participated in the day-long workshop. Speaker sessions and panel discussions addressed: 

• Developing a state and regional ecosystem demonstrating a critical mineral supply chain from resources to solutions to end users. 
• A strong emphasis on workforce training for this emerging industry.  
• Establishing a regional critical mineral consortium to facilitate resource exploration, characterization, processing, and utilization.
• Creating official industry-university collaborations that included internships, field trips, curricular training, R&D collaboration, and stakeholder liaisons. 

 Workshop organizers plan to reconvene in six months to continue conversations and build momentum on critical minerals research, from supplies to workforce training and beyond. 

Emma Blandford is the Program & Portfolio Manager for Sustainability Next, an initiative outlined in Georgia Tech’s strategic plan which seeks to establish the Institute as a leader in inclusive, economic, and environmental sustainability in Institute operations; sustainable development education; sustainability leadership and transdisciplinary research; culture and organization; climate solutions; and in using the campus as a living learning laboratory. Emma's role is supported by both the Office of Sustainability, where she reports to Associate Vice President of Sustainability Jennifer Chirico, and the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) where she reports to Interim Executive Director Beril Toktay. She regularly collaborates with members of both organizations and serves as a bridge between them.

As the portfolio manager for Sustainability Next, Emma serves as a facilitator, connecting like-minded people from across campus so they can collaborate while also helping them access available resources. With sustainability being a broad inter- and multi-disciplinary field, the opportunities for collaboration are endless, but bringing people from diverse fields can also be a challenge. That is where Emma’s background in team-building and project management comes in.

“It’s my job to make sure that people have what they need to do their jobs,” she says. “They're passionate and they’re incredibly intelligent. In sustainability, it's hard to find people who aren't deeply personally attached to their roles. So my goal is to empower them and help them succeed.”

Emma oversees and supports a variety of teams and projects that are working towards established sustainability goals on campus, tracking their progress, providing access to resources, and removing obstacles when necessary.

On any given day Emma could be talking to researchers, campus communicators, facilities staff, students, or organizational leadership. If their roles touch on sustainability, she wants to hear from them and find ways to help them achieve success while bringing them under the Sustainability Next umbrella. If you are already working in sustainability at Georgia Tech or would like to be, feel free to reach out through the Sustainability Next webpage or to Emma directly.

When she isn’t at work Emma enjoys spending time with her wife, two kids, three dogs, and cat- outdoors when possible. She is originally from Connecticut and holds degrees from UConn and Western New England University.

Written by Benjamin Wright