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Caltech
Resnick Sustainability Institute

Research Grants

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
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
Understanding the Networked Dynamics of Social Pressure: Application to adoption of pollution-reducing cookstoves in Nepal
PIs:Marina Agranov and Juni Singh
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
Towards an Efficient Magnetic Refrigerator
A modular microbial consortium for bioremediation
PIs:Sarkis Mazmanian and Matt Thomson
Team:Joseph Boktor
Neural Mechanisms of Odor-Guided Foraging in Alternative Pollinators
PI:Elizabeth Hong
Team:Pratyush Kandimalla and Aubrie de la Cruz
Immobilization of Heavy Metals from Fluid Flows by Manganese Oxide Generating Biofilms
PI:Jared Leadbetter
Team:Hannah Way
Landscape-scale tracking of insect populations
PIs:Joseph Parker and Michael Dickinson
Team:Tarun Sharma
Development of Isotopic Analysis for Sulfur Source Attribution
PIs:John Seinfeld and Alex Sessions
Team:Haroula Baliaka
Quantifying the Effects of Methane Mitigation Strategies on Microbial Rumen Fermentation
PI:Alex Sessions
Team:Elliot Mueller and Yeonsoo Park
Hydrological Hazards under Climate Change: AI-Accelerated Risk Predictions
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
Polyolefins for Improved Upcycling
PI:Theodor Agapie
Team:Meaghan Bruening and Tianyi He
Machine-learning-enabled models of ground water transport processes
PI:Kaushik Bhattacharya
Team:Mina Karimi
Biocomposites from wastewater treatment algal ponds for packaging and construction
PI:Chiara Daraio
Team:Israel Kellersztein and Helen Wexler
Building a Greenhouse to Enable Broad Sustainability Research Across Campus
PI:Gozde Demirer
Instrument for Measurements of Nucleation in Stratospheric Climate Intervention
PI:Richard Flagan
Team:Mingyi Wang
Electrochemical Synthesis of Ferrate for Rural Water Treatment Systems
PI:Michael R. Hoffman
Team:Sean McBeath and Yi (Sam)Zhang
Exploration towards quantitative fungal profiling across environmental niches
PI:Rustem F. Ismagilov
Team:Reid Akana, Jenny Ji and Anna Romano
Design of Mesostructures Exhibiting Anisotropic Wetting for Solar Water Evaporation
PI:Nathan Lewis
Team:Azhar Carim, Madeline Meier and Sarah Kabboul
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
From Sediment to Spodumene: Age-dependent Lithium Fractionation in Granites
PI:Claire Bucholz
Team:Paolo Sanchez
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
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
Characterizing the Rates and Fates of Degrading Carbon in the Environment
PI:John Eiler
Team:Sarah Zeichner
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
Synthesis of Biodegradable Plastics by Engineered Enzymes Enabled by Machine Learning
PI:Frances Arnold
Team:Ethan Quinn
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
Synthetic routes to iridoids for invasive ant control
PIs:Sarah E. Resiman and Joseph Parker
Team:Joshua Belfield and Hayley Smihula
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
Tuning Light Harvesting Complex in photosynthetic algae for improved carbon capture and fitness in diverse environments
PI:Shou-oh Shan
Team:Yelim Yi
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
Blue Carbon Storage Changes in Southern California's Largest Salt Marsh
PI:Woodward Fischer
Team:Theodore Present
Non-transgenic environmental curing of virulence plasmids from bacterial plant pathogens
PIs:Bruce Hay and Richard Murray
Team:Thomas Adamo Schmidt and John Marken
Constraining the world's deep soil carbon stores in riverine corridors
PI:Michael Lamb
Team:Harrison Martin
Engineering Salinity-Resilient Plants via Rapid Spatial CRISPR Screening
PI:Trevor M. Nolan
Team:TBD
Connecting Scales of Coastal Seagrass Health and Extent with Imaging Spectroscopy
PI:Victoria Orphan
TeamJohn Magyar and James Mullahoo
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
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
Wafer-scale synthesis of transition-metal dichalcogenide thin films for solar energy storage
PI: Austin Minnich
Team: David Catherall, Finley Donachie, and Yifei Yan