Millennium Café

Chris Marone / Eliza Richardson | Geosciences

How have campus climate and faculty activities been impacted by the digital age and increasing pressure to complete research and teaching obligations off campus? What are the effects on Campus Life of research-related travel, task-overload, and pressure to publish?  We have begun a discussion of these issues in the College of EMS and are interested in your thoughts about what the University can do to encourage an environment in which lab benches compete favorably with cyberinfrastructure for our attention and campus venues and activities compete favorably with email as a mode of collegial interaction among faculty, students, and staff.

Markus Kastner | Materials Characterization Lab

The MCL recently acquired capabilities to enable correlated fluorescence and atomic force microscopy (AFM). This upgrade and other investments open up a wide range of new applications: visualization of single virus particles, observing dynamic processes of biomolecules in real-time, mechanical quantification of tissues on the nanoscale, to the analysis of biomolecular assemblies at the single-molecule level. AFM is one of the few techniques that provides label-free sub-nanometer resolution of proteins, nucleic acid-protein complexes, membranes, and other sensitive bio-molecules and is even able to study living cells under aqueous buffer conditions.

Most of the energy we use today is derived from fossil fuels, but the transition to a carbon-neutral economy will require more than just capturing solar and wind power for electricity generation. We must consider the energy sustainability of our water, food, and industrial infrastructures by shifting from a hydrocarbon to electrochemical platform based on water, hydrogen and electrons—if we are smart enough to solve some very challenging problems in electrochemistry. The Penn State Energy 2100 Strategic Initiative will help mobilize resources in these directions.

Calvin Yeager  |  “Instructions to Harm”

Marlene Carla Ndoun Tangmo  |  “Biochar as a Filter Media for the Adsorption of Emerging Contaminants”

Laxmicharan Samineni  |  “Nature-based Pathogen Filters”

On May 21^th 40 students competed in the Millennium Café Pitch Competition sponsored by PPG.  The competition was fierce as students had <2 minutes to introduce their research in a manner that was understandable and inspiring to our panel of judges.  Don’t miss this opportunity to hear the top-3 winners from this year’s competition.

There is a vast disconnect between the crystallization behavior of polymers under controlled conditions and the highly sheared, rapidly-quenched conditions encountered during manufacturing. I will discuss new techniques to understand and manipulate the flow induced crystallization of polymers under fast cooling conditions, to form intentional microstructure, and optimize property profiles of both neat and composite polymers.

In the spirit of the Café, 45 students are competing for the top prize by pitching their research in two minutes or less. Topics range from clean water, nanoscience, medicine, energy, materials, and much more. This is a great opportunity to scout for new collaborations while enjoying a cup of coffee. The competition starts at 10:00 and will be setup similar to a poster session - this enables attendees to individually engage the competitors. Please be mindful of the judges as they need to evaluate every competitor in a short period of time. PPG has once again generously provided funding to enable this fantastic event.