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Caltech
Resnick Sustainability Institute

Research Grants

Slowing Down Climate Change: Architecting Resilient, Efficient, and Safe Solid State Batteries for Electric Vehicles (EVs)
PI:Julia R. Greer
Team:Fernando Villafuerte and Yuchun Sun
Noncorrosive Electrolytes for Mg and Ca Batteries
PIs:Kimberly See and Theodor Agapie
Team:Steven Stradley, Christopher Povinelli, Tianyi He, Meaghan Bruening and Tyler Fox
Development of Thermally-Activated Transient Polymers
PI:Maxwell J. Robb
Team:Xiaoran Hu and Brooke Versaw
Development of Synthetic Strategies to Prepare Redox Active Microbial Metabolites Relevant to Sustainability
PI:Sarah E. Reisman
Automated Ecological Monitoring - Learning from Context
PI:Pietro Perona
Team:Sara Beery and Elijah Cole
Soil by the Numbers: A Rhizosphere Database
PI:Elliot Meyerowitz
Storage Optimization for Voltage Stability in Power Distribution Grids
PI:Steven Low
Team:Tongxin Li, Lucien Werner, Chen Liang, Fengyu Xhou and Zachary Lee
Predicting Riverbank Erosion for Climate-Change Adaptation Planning in Thawing Permafrost Landscapes
PI:Michael P. Lamb
Team:Madison Douglas
Uptake modeling and transport of CO2 during the carbonation of cement
PI:Melany Hunt
Alkali carbonate sorbents in fluidized bed for highly efficient point source CO2 capture and separation
PI:Michael Hoffman
Team:Clement Cid and Alan Y. Gu
Suppressing Populations of Drosophila Suzukii, an Invasive Pest of Fruit in California and Elsewhere
PI:Bruce A. Hay
Team:Georg Oberhofer
Developing the nematode Steinernema hermaphroditum as a delivery vector for engineered microbes into soil environments
PIs:Paul Sternberg and Richard Murray
Team:Mengyi Cao, John Marken and Hillel Schwartz
Sustainable Carbon Concentration and Storage in Pistachio Shell-Derived Activated Carbons
PI:Brent Fultz
Team:Channing Ahn and Cullen Quine
Tracing the Fate of Water Through Snow: A Cryo-Hydrologic Model for Meltwater Percolation
PI:Xiaojing (Ruby) Fu
Team:Adrian Moure
Impact of Climate and Regenerative Agriculture Practices on Soil Methane Sinks
PI:Woodward Fischer
Team:Hannah Dion-Kirschner
Dust Composition and Climate - Understanding Drylands Soil Mineralogy from Remote Sensing
PI:Bethany L. Ehlmann
Team:Rebecca Greenberger and Abigail Keebler
Acquisition of a Laser Source for a Hard X-ray Spectrometer
PI:Scott K. Cushing
Team:Danika Nimlos, Jonathan Michelsen and Levi Palmer
Managing water resources in a changing climate: More intense but shorter monsoon seasons?
PI:Simona Bordoni
Team:Katrina Hui
Optical Remote Sensing of Earth Surface Changes due to Climate Change
PI:Jean-Philipe Avouac
Team:Saif Aaati
Direct Air Capture of Carbon Dioxide using an Electrochemical pH Swing
PIs:Harry Atwater and Chenxiang (CX) Xiang
Team:Zachary Schiffer
Using Insights from the Lab to Better Design Reactors for Carbon Storage in Natural Waters
PI:Jess F. Adkins
Team:Holly Barnhart
RSI Summer School on Computer Vision Methods for Ecology
PI:Pietro Perona
Team:Sara Beery, Suzanne Stathatos and Tarun Sharma
An Open Synthetic Biology Toolkit for Engineering Reliable Genetic Circuits in Microbes in Soil
PI:Richard M. Murray
Team:John P. Marken and Elin M. Larsson
Distributed and Intelligent Energy Systems: Energy Storage, Renewable and Smart Energy Homes
PIs:Adam Wierman and Animashree (Anima) Anandkumar
Team:Yuanyuan Shi
Constraining Oil and Natural Gas Methane Emissions using Ethane and Propane
PI:Paul O. Wennberg
Team:Ariana Tribby
Carbon Export in the Southern Ocean
PI:Andrew F. Thompson
Diffuse CO2 Emissions and Ecosystem Response at Costa Rican Volcanoes
PI:Joann M. Stock
Acoustic Patterning of Photosynthetic Microbes for Enhanced Biomass Production
PI: Mikhail G. Shapiro
Team:Yuxing Yao
Acquisition of a Spectroscopic Water Isotope Analyzer
PIs:Alex L. Sessions and Nathan F. Dalleska
Acquisition of PICARRO CO2/CH4/CO/H2O Analyzer
PI:John H. Seinfeld, Richard C. Flagan and Jess F. Adkins
The Great Human Experiment By The Numbers
PI:Rob Phillips
Team:Griffin D. Chure, Avi Flamholz, Tine Valencic and Nichols S. Sarai
Microbial Processes in the Seagrass Rhizosphere: Blue Carbon Burial & Greenhouse Gas Emissions
PI:Victoria J. Orphan
Team:Kriti Sharma
Identifying Beneficial Microbial Partnerships in Citrus and Pistachio Rhizospheres
PI:Dianne K. Newman
Team:Kurt M. Dahlstrom and Elena K. Perry
The Caltech Critical Zone Initiative
PIs:Christian Frankenburg, Michael Lamb, Ruby Fu, Woodward Fischer and Michael Alvarez
Team:Josh Anadu, Samantha Baker, Hannah Dion-Kirschner, Danny Ebanks, Emily Geyman, Harrison Martin, Beatrice Magistro, Adrian Moure Rosende, Joselyn Reahl, Alexis Renchon and Bryn Stewart
Polymer-Encapsulated Molecule/Carbon Composites as High Energy Density Slurry Electrolytes for Energy Storage and Conversion Technologies
PI:Ryan G. Hadt
Team:Brendon J. McNIcholas
The Sustainable Synthesis of Organic Compounds: Iron-Catalyzed Enantioselective Carbon–Carbon Bond Formation
PI:Gregory C. Fu
Modernizing Insect Censusing Technologies to Inform Conservation Models
PIs:Michael H. Dickinson and Joseph Parker
Team:William B. Dickson, Kellan P. Moorse and Katherine J. Leitch
Algae-based Biocomposites to Replace Plastics and Engineered Woods
PI:Chiara Daraio
An Integrated Geodetic Approach To Understand Central Valley Water Resources
PIs:Venkat Chandrasekaran and Andrew M. Stuart
Team:Mike Turmon
Seismic Ocean Thermometry
PIs:Joern Callies and Zhongwen Zhang
Team:Shirui Peng and Wenbo Wu
A Circum-Owens Lake Fiber Seismic Network for Groundwater Research
PI:Zhongwen Zhan
Team:Elijah Bird and Yan Yang
Initial Exploration into the Implementation of Buried Cameras for Long Timeline Rhizosphere Study
PI:Changhuei Yang
Team:Ruizhi Cao
Machine Learning Guided Discovery of Polymer Membranes for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
PI:Zhen-Gang Wang
Team:Yasemin Basdogan
Tuning Light Harvesting Complex in photosynthetic algae for improved carbon capture and fitness in diverse environments
PI:Shou-oh Shan
Team:Yelim Yi
Antarctic Ocean-Ice Interactions: Pathways to Catastrophic Sea Level Rise
PIs:Andrew F. Thompson, Jane Bae, Hannah Druckenmiller, Ruby Fu and Mark Simons
Team:Diederik Beckers, Ching-Te Lin, Junning Liu, Ruth Moorman and Auden Reid-McLaughlin
Hydrological Hazards under Climate Change: AI-Accelerated Risk Predictions
Continuous, Accurate and Cost-effective Counting of Migrating Salmon for Conservation and Fishery Management in the Pacific Northwest
PIsPietro Perona and Georgia Gkioxari
Team:MIchael Hobley, Suzanne Stathatos, Madison Van Horn and Sevan Brodjian
New Tools for Estimating Location-specific Ecosystem Values at National Scale to Inform Sustainable Management
PIs:Hannah Druckenmiller and Georgia Gkioxari
Team:Lauren Hyoseo Yoon
Connecting Scales of Coastal Seagrass Health and Extent with Imaging Spectroscopy
PI:Victoria Orphan
TeamJohn Magyar and James Mullahoo
Engineering Salinity-Resilient Plants via Rapid Spatial CRISPR Screening
PI:Trevor M. Nolan
Team:TBD
Constraining the world's deep soil carbon stores in riverine corridors
PI:Michael Lamb
Team:Harrison Martin
Non-transgenic environmental curing of virulence plasmids from bacterial plant pathogens
PIs:Bruce Hay and Richard Murray
Team:Thomas Adamo Schmidt and John Marken
Blue Carbon Storage Changes in Southern California's Largest Salt Marsh
PI:Woodward Fischer
Team:Theodore Present
A Universal, Host-Independent, Cell-Free Biomanufacturing Platform to Produce Plant Pathogen-Targeting Bacteriophages for Sustainable Agricultural Biocontrol
PIs:William M. (Bil)Clemons and Richard Murray
Team:Yan Zhang
Understanding the Networked Dynamics of Social Pressure: Application to adoption of pollution-reducing cookstoves in Nepal
PIs:Marina Agranov and Juni Singh
Enabling Superhot Dry Rock Energy and Gigaton Carbon Storage
PI:Jean-Phillipe Avouac
Team:Ruby Fu, Zach Ross, Allen Husker, Samson Marty and Yijian Zhou
Heavy metal transport in the wake of urban megafires: Building a dynamical framework to assess, mitigate, and adapt to an emerging climate threat
PIs:Francois Tissot and Christian Frankenberg
Team:Merrit McDowell
Synthetic routes to iridoids for invasive ant control
PIs:Sarah E. Resiman and Joseph Parker
Team:Joshua Belfield and Hayley Smihula
Accelerated Discovery of Earth-Abundant Zintl-Compound Semiconductors for High-Voltage, High-Radiative-Efficiency Solar Cells with >30% Efficiency
PI:Harry Atwater
Team:Mina Mandic and Amelyn Phang
Synthesis of Biodegradable Plastics by Engineered Enzymes Enabled by Machine Learning
PI:Frances Arnold
Team:Ethan Quinn
Engineering Nitrogenase for the Bioelectrocatalytic Reduction of N2 to Ammonia
PIs:Steven L. Mayo and Douglas C. Rees
Team:Olive Cheng, Mikhail Hameedi, Andrew Orta, Lucas Schaus, Rebecca Warmack
Characterizing the Rates and Fates of Degrading Carbon in the Environment
PI:John Eiler
Team:Sarah Zeichner and Lubna Shawar
Sustainable Ammonia Synthesis for Zero-Carbon Fertilizers and Fuels
PI:Jonas Peters and Karthish Manthiram
Co-PIs:Theodor Agapie, Harry Atwater, Julia Greer and John Gregoire
Team:Sayan Banerjee, Emily Boyd, Cyrus Fiori, Anukta Jain, Channing Klein, Gangsan Lee, Catherine Romero, Ellis Spickermann, Michael Yusov
Workplace Decarbonization through Real-time Data, Learning and Control
PIs: Steven Low, Adam Wierman
Team: Lucien Werner, Yiheng Xie, Nico Christianson, Thuy-Linh Le, Christine Ortega
From Sediment to Spodumene: Age-dependent Lithium Fractionation in Granites
PI:Claire Bucholz
Team:Paolo Sanchez
Monitoring Bioavailable Phosphorus with an Integrated Biosensor and Wireless Reporter System
PIs:Azita Emami, Julie Kornfield, Dianne Newman and Chanhuei Yang
Team:Reinaldo Alcalde, Fatima Aghlmand, Ting-Yu Cheng, Jarek Kwiecinski, Elin Larsson, Raj Mukkamala and Oumeng Zhang
SustainGym: Reinforcement Learning for Carbon Emissions Reduction
PIs:Adam Wierman and Yisong Yue
Team:Christopher Yeh
Observing and modeling change in the High Latitude Northern Forests
PIs:Paul Wennberg and Christian Frankenberg
Team:Ke Liu and Junjie Liu
Design of Mesostructures Exhibiting Anisotropic Wetting for Solar Water Evaporation
PI:Nathan Lewis
Team:Azhar Carim, Madeline Meier and Sarah Kabboul
Exploration towards quantitative fungal profiling across environmental niches
PI:Rustem F. Ismagilov
Team:Reid Akana, Jenny Ji and Anna Romano
Electrochemical Synthesis of Ferrate for Rural Water Treatment Systems
PI:Michael R. Hoffman
Team:Sean McBeath and Yi (Sam)Zhang
Instrument for Measurements of Nucleation in Stratospheric Climate Intervention
PI:Richard Flagan
Team:Mingyi Wang
Building a Greenhouse to Enable Broad Sustainability Research Across Campus
PI:Gozde Demirer
Biocomposites from wastewater treatment algal ponds for packaging and construction
PI:Chiara Daraio
Team:Israel Kellersztein and Helen Wexler
Machine-learning-enabled models of ground water transport processes
PI:Kaushik Bhattacharya
Team:Mina Karimi
Polyolefins for Improved Upcycling
PI:Theodor Agapie
Team:Meaghan Bruening and Tianyi He
Engineering a technology platform for monitoring gene expression dynamics within soil microbes in the undisturbed rhizosphere: lateral gene transfer, conditional guide RNAs, and sentinel plants
PIs:Gozde Demirer, Bruce Hay, Elliot Meyerowitz and Niles Pierce
Team:Julia Abrego, Shuwen (Eric) Lei, John Marken, Paul Tarr and Yunqing Wang
Quantifying the Effects of Methane Mitigation Strategies on Microbial Rumen Fermentation
PI:Alex Sessions
Team:Elliot Mueller and Yeonsoo Park
Development of Isotopic Analysis for Sulfur Source Attribution
PIs:John Seinfeld and Alex Sessions
Team:Haroula Baliaka
Landscape-scale tracking of insect populations
PIs:Joseph Parker and Michael Dickinson
Team:Tarun Sharma
Immobilization of Heavy Metals from Fluid Flows by Manganese Oxide Generating Biofilms
PI:Jared Leadbetter
Team:Hannah Way
Neural Mechanisms of Odor-Guided Foraging in Alternative Pollinators
PI:Elizabeth Hong
Team:Pratyush Kandimalla and Aubrie de la Cruz
A modular microbial consortium for bioremediation
PIs:Sarkis Mazmanian and Matt Thomson
Team:Joseph Boktor
Towards an Efficient Magnetic Refrigerator
A Physics-Based, Data-Ready, Modular Workflow for Sedimentary Geothermal Energy for Turning Hydrocarbon Reservoirs into Geothermal Power
PI:Jean-Phillipe Avouac
Team:Mateo Acosta, Kyungjae Im and Ruby Fu
Wafer-scale synthesis of transition-metal dichalcogenide thin films for solar energy storage
PI: Austin Minnich
Team: David Catherall, Finley Donachie, and Yifei Yan