Millennium Café

While radiocarbon (¹⁴C) measurement is usually associated with archaeological or paleontological chronology building, the technique has creative applications in astrophysics, oceanic and atmospheric circulation, hydrology, forensics, art history, aerosol and hydrocarbon research, biofuels, soils science, drug enforcement, wildlife conservation, and more.  Penn State’s AMS ¹⁴C laboratory gives researchers access to high-precision AMS ¹⁴C measurements and interdisciplinary collaboration.  This talk will give a sense of the varied and unexpected uses of AMS ¹⁴C that may surprise you.

Brendan Culleton

Strategic planning has paved the way for Penn State's ascension among the ranks of the world’s great research universities. Since the 1980s, Penn State has engaged in strategic planning to strengthen its ability to make careful, informed choices, and to allocate resources based on evidence, judgment, and long-term priorities. In 2016, Penn State published its five-year strategic plan, titled “Our Commitment to Impact,” and plan implementation is underway across the university. In this presentation, Provost Jones will share details about the plan implementation process and some recently funded initiatives that reveal how real-world activities support Penn State’s strategic priorities. Also covered: best practices in strategic planning, as well as pitfalls to avoid; how engagement, collaboration, and innovation by researchers and others university-wide are driving meaningful change; and some key takeaways Dr. Jones has gleaned from his work in higher education leadership.

Nicholas P. Jones | Executive Vice President and Provost

Dielectrics are a broad class of materials that do not have significant electronic or ionic conduction.  They are critical in many applications that require high voltage or controlled electromagnetic wave propagation.  The fundamental properties of dielectric materials will be discussed along with example applications in hybrid electric vehicles and magnetic resonance imaging.

Modern smart-phones come equipped with sophisticated optics that can be used to record scientific phenomena.  This talk provides an overview of how to extract scientific data from images recorded using smart-phone cameras and other sophisticated imaging devices.  Applications including object shape/surface-topography analyses, understanding complex material phenomena, and using smart phones as visual aids will be discussed.

Saurabh Basu | Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

Semipermeable membranes are used throughout the downstream purification of all biotherapeutics, e.g., monoclonal antibodies which have current sales in excess of $100 billion / year. This talk will provide a short overview of the key applications of membrane systems in bioprocessing with a specific focus on the use of membrane filtration for the removal of contaminating viruses. The ability of these membranes to provide highly selective separations is determined by their nanoscale pore structure – recent results from our laboratory using confocal microscopy and SEM provide new insights into the complex virus capture behavior of these porous membranes.

This talk shares a vision for sustainability at PSU, it explains what sustainability is in terms of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and how we plan to achieve them through collaborations across disciplines, colleges and campuses. We invite collaboration on experiential learning, transdisciplinary sustainability solutions, and creating "living labs" at the Sustainability Experience Center.

Paul Shrivastava | Sustainability Institute