Projects

What should we know about the services you provide? Better descriptions result in more sales.

What should we know about the services you provide? Better descriptions result in more sales.

This transformative cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral venture is developing the first socioresilient DECISION-support software system which integrates and optimizes materials technical (T), environmental (E), social (S), and financial (F) metrics, as actionable intelligence for accelerating materials R&D sustainability and advancing materials value chain sustainability.

In the next two decades, an exponentially growing volume of electronic waste will be generated as solar panels reach their end-of-life. Meanwhile, demand for new solar capacity will increase the value of key raw materials, underscoring the importance of recycling and movement toward a circular economy. However, uncertainties over the quantities and exact material composition of solar panel waste hamper investments by recyclers, manufacturers, and governments. In this study, morphological analysis and characterization of representative solar cells and modules from the 1930s to 2020s is made to help forecast the composition of recoverable materials and identify challenges and opportunities for recycling.  Achieving a circular economy for solar materials will require continued improvements in material efficiency as observed in the retrospective analysis.

How might forces and interactions at the surface of sand particles contribute to material agency impacting with tangible impact on human life? This article explores the multiscale materiality of a technological model, how it -catalyzed social action, and how it influenced the development of larger-scale municipal infrastructure systems. It focuses on a demonstration sand filter constructed through civic engagement in Pittsburgh in 1895. This locally embedded community technology, situated in international networks of scientific knowledge, served a practical “object lesson” in abstract principles of sanitation engineering—publicly demonstrating and validating the counterintuitive ability of local sand and gravel to purify city water. By bridging materials science and engineering with histories of technology, this study contributes to discourses on new materialism by identifying nonhuman agency at the nano- and micrometer scale and tracing its implications for public health, civic identity, and infrastructure design.

The Station1 Frontiers Fellowship (SFF) is a prestigious, fully-funded experience for undergraduate students focused on socially-directed science and technology education, research, and innovation. Socially-directed science and technology is a new model of learning and research which aims to interrogate, understand, and shape technologically-driven societal impact towards more equitable and sustainable outcomes. A unique internationally-recognized model of higher education, the SFF integrates three programmatic components: A research experience in emerging areas of science and technology with leading established and startup partner companies, research institutes, and nonprofit organizations. A cross-disciplinary shared curriculum focused on socially-directed science and technology taught by world-class scientists, engineers, and researchers is applied to the internship research projects , Personal and professional advancement activities