RCEI Newsletter

August 2024

Issue 2

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It has been an exciting inaugural year for RCEI. We have grown to over 200 faculty and staff affiliates whose scholarship touches upon our focus on the social and physical dimensions of climate change, low carbon energy transitions, and climate and energy communication. This spring we launched our Groundwork Grant Program to facilitate planning for comprehensive competitive proposals and scholarship toward emerging climate and energy research. In March we held a workshop for faculty and staff to hone their skills in developing the Broader Impacts of their research including the pursuit of partnerships to benefit society. In May we hosted a public symposium Sustainability Governance in the Anthropocene to explore managing major challenges such as climate change, food security, and biodiversity loss in the face of accelerating human pressure, increasing complexity, and persistent inequality. This symposium was designed to inform continued development of a Rutgers Center that will focus on innovative interdisciplinary social science research that develops and assesses new forms of environmental governance.

These and other stories, as well as just a few of the many achievements and activities of our extraordinary affiliates and students, are highlighted in this newsletter. There is so much more you can learn at our website: https://rcei.rutgers.edu/.

Julie Lockwood,

RCEI Director

Join us in October at NAWEA WindTech 2024, the premier technical conference on wind energy in North America that will be hosted at Rutgers and co-hosted by the New Jersey Academic Alliance for Offshore Wind!  

October 28 through November 2, 2024

Rutgers–New Brunswick

Learn More and Register Here

Charles Dismukes

Yalin Li

Mary Whelan

Qingze Zhou

RCEI has awarded 3 Groundwork Grants to faculty affiliates Charles Dismukes, Yalin Li, Mary Whelan, and Qingze Zhou to facilitate planning for comprehensive competitive research proposals toward the emerging global emphasis on the bioeconomy in addressing climate change. Bioeconomy harnesses the power of biology in novel production of goods, services, and energy to grow the economy and workforce while improving quality of life and the environment. Key to the bioeconomy concept is reducing dependence on fossil fuels while preventing biodiversity loss, reducing risks to people, and ensuring economic growth follows ethical, responsible, and sustainable principles.

Dismukes of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology & Department of Chemistry, School of Arts and Sciences is pursuing the project Improving Photosynthesis by Metabolic Engineering to Increase Carbon Fixation and Plant Biomass. Principal Investigator Li, of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, will examine Sustainable Value-Added Products from Kelp.  Vulnerability of Natural Climate Solutions under Climate Change is the project being undertaken by Whelan of the Department Environmental Sciences, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and Co-Principal Investigator Zou of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering. 

Read More Here

The RCEI Student Support Program enables graduate students working in climate and energy to develop, conduct and collaborate on scholarship with other academics in their field, and improve their ability to translate their research to a range of constituencies.  Our support often is a ‘game changer’ for these students providing them a chance to showcase their research and establish professional connections that will contribute to their success once they have completed their education at Rutgers University. Meet some of our most recent awardees. 

Austin Grubb, Ph.D. candidate in Oceanography studies phytoplankton, which perform half of the photosynthesis on the planet. As key players in the global carbon cycle, phytoplankton influence the climate. Austin traveled to the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2024 in New Orleans, LA where he presented his research Cellular investments in calcification in the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi. 

Nina Grant, Ph.D. Candidate in Atmospheric Science presenting her research on the impacts of solar climate intervention on Indian agriculture at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco, December 2023. 

Ph.D. candidate in Geography, Md. Arafat Hassan at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco, December 2023, presents his research Mapping Supraglacial Stream Networks Using Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles in Southwest Greenland. 

You can read more about these and other students’ experiences here.