Collaborative Research: NRT: Next Generation Technology and Talent Driven by Environmental Sustainability

Environmental sustainability is vital to human society. Climate change, water scarcity, and declining biodiversity are closely intertwined threats. At the same time, technological solutions require manufacturing capability and steady supplies of materials. The twin threats of declining planetary resilience and U.S. supply chain risks must be addressed by individuals and organizations. The actions and practices of business enterprises play an outsize role in solving these problems, and therefore, the goal of this project is to develop a graduate program to fulfill an area of national need: integrating environmental sustainability into business. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to Purdue University and North Carolina Agricultural and Technological State University (NC A&T) will enable a commerce system that practices innovation for environmental sustainability. The project anticipates training 22 NRT-funded trainees and approximately 70 additional graduate students at both master's and doctoral degree levels. Fields of study include environmental and ecological engineering, materials engineering, civil engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, and architectural engineering. The NRT training and research outcomes will contribute significantly to a diverse STEM workforce, with particular emphasis on recruiting and mentoring African-American and women doctoral students in engineering.The education and training activities are guided by the Engineering for One Planet (EOP) framework, and include four components: 1) an outcomes-based curriculum; 2) doctoral dissertation; 3) at least one non-academic research experience at a for-profit organization aligned with the student’s dissertation topic; 4) formal, explicit training in communication, ethics, and teamwork in a project-based course. The technical rigor of a doctoral degree in engineering uniquely accelerates innovation over the entire business cycle of products and services, enabling optimal trade-offs among performance, environmental impact, and cost. The project team consists of ~20 researchers at Purdue University and NC A&T, who will conduct convergent research organized into three pillars: 1) Greening the Digital Economy, 2) Decarbonizing Steel and Electricity, and 3) Transportation. Key outcomes from each pillar include reducing the environmental impacts of computing, including data centers, in the context of the digital economy; utilizing lifecycle assessment methods for considering the consequential impacts of macro energy system transitions in producing large quantities of low-carbon fuels and materials; and developing frameworks and modeling tools that integrate techno-economic analysis and supply chain risk evaluation into environmental assessments of emerging technologies such as electrification, shared mobility, and e-commerce. These methods will impact multiple disciplines and help change the business paradigm around environmental sustainability.The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary or convergent research areas through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.