Co-hosted with the Institute for Water Innovation (IWI)
Host: Vladimiros Papangelakis
Plastic debris and in particular secondary microplastics represent a significant problem among the various pollution problems facing the marine environment. Several studies have been conducted on the fate and weathering of plastics in the marine environment including the generation and fate of microplastics. Laboratory results on the biodegradation of plastics show great variability. An important question, which remains unanswered, is what is the level of weathering that makes the common plastics (C-C backbone) biodegradable at a reasonably fast rate. In this presentation we focus on the determination of biodegradation and fragmentation rates of polystyrene and polyethylene films naturally weathered on beach sand as well as polypropylene films weathered in seawater mesocosms. Their fate in the water column is also examined. Overall, the results are very encouraging pointing to new challenges that need to be addressed for a successful biodegradation of plastics in the marine environment as well as significant advances in the context of circular economy. The most effective mitigation measures and plastic debris removal technologies from the marine environment will also be highlighted.
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Nicolas Kalogerakis is Professor of Biochemical Engineering at the Technical University of Crete (Greece) where he has served as Vice-President of the University Council and as Department Head (twice). Prior to that he was a Professor at SUNY-Buffalo (USA) and at the University of Calgary (Canada). He holds a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from NTUA (Athens), an MEng from McGill University and a PhD from the University of Toronto. His area of expertise includes environmental biotechnology focusing on bioremediation and phytoremediation technologies for the restoration of contaminated sites; protection and restoration of the marine environment; novel oxygenation systems and wastewater treatment; and mathematical modeling of environmental processes. Currently his group is participating in several National projects and 4 EU-funded research projects (H2020) and he was the coordinator of the large FP7-project KILL*SPILL. Prof. Kalogerakis’ publication record includes five patents, one book, 188 papers in referred journals and more than 170 presentations at international conferences including several keynote and plenary presentations. He has >8100 citations with a H-index of 47 (Scopus). He has served as a member of the European Commission Environment Committee (2007-2011) and as Sherpa at the European Commission High Level Group on Key Enabling Technologies (2013-2015).
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Irving O. Shoichet Distinguished Lecture
Host: Molly Shoichet
Our laboratory studies how micro- and nanoscale systems can be deployed to understand, diagnose, and treat human disease. In this talk, I will describe our progress in two application areas: liver disease and cancer. In the area of hepatic tissue engineering, we are developing microtechnology tools to understand how ensembles of cells coordinate to produce tissues with emergent properties in the body. We have used this understanding to fabricate human microliver tissues in both ‘2D’ and ‘3D’ formats that enable us to study the pathogenesis drug-drug interactions, hepatotropic pathogens, and regeneration.
In the area of cancer, we are developing nanotechnology tools to meet the challenge of delivering cargo into the tumor microenvironment where transport is dominated by diffusion. Our strategy is to design nanotechnologies which emulate nature’s mechanisms of homing, activation, and amplification to deliver cytotoxic drugs, diagnostic tools, imaging agents, and siRNA to tumors. Thus, using nature as a guide, we are establishing a framework for building systems from micro- and nanoscale components that function collectively to treat human disease.
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Sangeeta Bhatia is a biomedical researcher, MIT professor, and biotech entrepreneur who works to adapt technologies developed in the computer industry for medical innovation. Trained as both a physician and engineer at Harvard, MIT, and Brown University, Bhatia leverages ‘tiny technologies’ of miniaturization to yield inventions such as human microlivers that model human drug metabolism and liver disease, as well as responsive nanoparticles and nanoporous materials that can be engineered to diagnose, study, and treat a variety of diseases, including cancer. She and her trainees have launched multiple biotechnology companies to improve human health. As a prolific inventor and passionate advocate for diversity in science and engineering, Bhatia has received many honors including the Lemelson-MIT Prize, known as the ‘Oscar for inventors,’ and the Heinz Medal for groundbreaking inventions and advocacy for women in STEM fields. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, the Director of the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and Brown University’s Board of Trustees.
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Joel Corbin, PhD
Research Officer, Metrology Research Centre National Research Council Canada
The combustion of carbonaceous fuels emits radiation-absorbing gases and particles, including but not limited to soot. These emissions play a major role in climate forcing. For example, mean global forcing by soot approaches that by CO2 and regional forcing by soot can exceed that of CO2. Yet recent work has recognized the role of other forms of carbon, such as small light-absorbing molecules (brown carbon) and light-absorbing macromolecules (tarballs).
Particle deposition on glaciers and snow further accelerates their melt. In order to understand the environmental effects of these materials, their fundamental properties must be understood, as these influence their atmospheric impacts, particularly their radiative forcing, and their deposition rates, resulting for example in the darkening of glaciers and snow. This talk will discuss the chemical nature of these light-absorbing carbons as well as physical models for their optical properties. The determination of accurate optical models is surprisingly difficult, and leads to the conclusion that the relative importance of non-soot aerosols can be surprisingly high.
Techno-economic analysis (TEA) integrates process design and economic analysis techniques to assess the commercial viability of production processes. Understanding TEA is fundamental for researchers developing novel production methods and pathways.
Workshop topics will include:
•Process design fundamentals
•Lab data for TEA and scale-up
•Economic analysis tools for talking to industry
•Estimating product price and feedstock costs
•Cap-Ex, Op-Ex and project financing
•Technology commercialization
•Presentations by industry partners
The workshop will focus on biotechnology applications.
Allison Simmonds is a Professional Engineer with a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto. She has more than 10 years of experience in environmental consulting, including 6 years working at the interface between research and industry with Savant Technical Consulting. Her expertise includes bioprocess engineering, techno-economic analysis, bioinformatics, bioremediation and site assessment, and life cycle assessment.
Lunch will be served so please register if you plan to attend: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/techno-economic-analysis-primer-workshop-registration-77175019561
Prof. Paschalis Alexandridis
University at Buffalo
Block copolymers exhibit an innate ability to organize from the nanoscale across to the mesoscale. Selective solvents provide valuable degrees of freedom for controlling the morphology and, hence, structure/property relationships; furthermore, solvents can dramatically affect the molecular mobility and the dynamics of structural transformations. The presentation will utilize research findings on “model” amphiphilic block copolymers of the poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(propylene oxide) (PEO-PPO) family, commercially available as Pluronics or Poloxamers, to discuss: (1) the basic self-assembly elements, i.e., micelles, in terms of the thermodynamics and interactions underlying their formation and disassembly in aqueous solvents (selective for PEO), and their nano-scale structure and dynamics, (2) the adsorption of block copolymers on surfaces macroscopic and nanoscale, hard and soft, and how the adsorbed layer structure can be related to the polymer organization in the bulk solution, (3) ordered micelles, i.e., lyotropic liquid crystal structures, in the context of their range of stability as affected by the block copolymer conformation and various additives (e.g., glycols, nanoparticles), and their structural transformations under shear, and (4) how the equilibrium phase behavior can inform processing paths for the preparation of kinetically stabilized emulsions and nanoparticles, and templates for nanomaterials synthesis. The self-assembly properties of PEO-PPO block copolymers in selective solvents are compared to those of low-molecular weight nonionic surfactants, and to block copolymers organizing in the absence of solvents.
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Paschalis Alexandridis utilizes molecular interactions and supramolecular assemblies to develop products with desired properties and function, and processes that are environment friendly and energy efficient. Ongoing projects address structuring via self-assembly and directed assembly, block copolymers, perfluorinated surfactants, ionic liquid solvents, polymer dissolution, biomass processing, and plastics recycling. He has worked with industry to address product and process issues involving complex fluids, soft materials, and surfaces, for example, formulation of waterborne inks for improved pigment deposition, prediction of long-term performance of biomedical cross-linked polymer gels, and control of adhesion during plastics processing.
Prof. Alexandridis has authored over 165 peer-reviewed articles (published in 60 different journals) and 65 proceedings (Google Scholar citations >17,400 and h-index = 67). He is the editor of two books and co-inventor of six U.S. patents on pharmaceutical formulations, superabsorbent polymers, and nanomaterial synthesis. He has served as Director of Graduate Studies in Chemical Engineering, Co-Director of the Materials Science and Engineering program, and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Alexandridis received his PhD in chemical engineering from MIT in 1994, and joined UB in 1997 following postdoctoral research in polymer and surfactant physical chemistry at Lund University in Sweden.
At UB, Alexandridis has developed and taught courses such as “We All Live in a Material World” and “Molecular Nanotechnology and Bionanotechnology” (freshman-level seminars), “Colloid and Surface Phenomena”, “Introduction to Polymers”, and “Petroleum Engineering” (elective courses), and “Product Design” (required capstone design course). He has mentored in research over 70 graduate and 70 undergraduate students.
Prof. Alexandridis is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He has received numerous awards including the American Chemical Society (ACS) Schoellkopf Medal, Bodossaki Foundation Academic Prize in Applied Science, SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activity and in Teaching, and UB’s inaugural Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award. Alexandridis has served as chair of AIChE Area 1C: “Interfacial Phenomena” and on the executive committee of the ACS Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry. He is currently serving as co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences and Review Editor of the Journal of Surfactants and Detergents.
We all need food – so that we don’t go hungry, stay fit, active and healthy through our lives. But if the food we consume doesn’t contain essential vitamins and minerals, that our bodies need on a daily and consistent basis – we will never reach our full potential. One in three of us do not get enough micronutrients to survive and thrive. In large parts of South Asia and sub Saharan Africa, more than half of all mothers and young children are anemic and iron/folate deficient compromising their health and survival and the lives of their children.
Research at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Toronto spanning nearly two decades has enabled us to develop a cost-effective and sustainable means of ensuring that people living in all regions of the world receive their micronutrients through table salt. Our work covered basic research, stability, consumer acceptability and efficacy testing and scale up to commercial levels. For just 25 cents per person per year it is now possible to add micronutrients like iron, folic acid, vitamin B12 and zinc (in shelf stable and efficacious forms) to salt.
Over the past 20 years salt containing added iodine has steadily reached nearly 5 billion people virtually eliminating iodine deficiency worldwide. Building on this infrastructure, multiple nutrient salt can aim to cover the same populations quickly, consistently and sustainably – contributing to reduction in maternal and young child mortality, better health and growth, increased work productivity and earnings – the real development bargain of the 21st Century!
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Venkatesh Mannar is a technology leader who has pioneered effective international nutrition initiatives focused on the world’s most vulnerable citizens. As President of the Micronutrient Initiative Canada (MI) headquartered in Ottawa for nearly 20 years till 2014, he played a major role in the development and expansion of health and nutrition programmes to address hidden hunger globally.
Mannar currently divides his time between India, Canada and the United States. He serves as a Special Adviser on Nutrition to the Tata Trusts and The Tata Cornell Agriculture & Nutrition Initiative. He pursues his research and teaching interests through appointments with the Centre for Global Engineering, Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science, University of Toronto and the Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University. He has co-authored more than 100 articles in leading journals and is the co-editor of ‘Food Fortification in a Globalized World’. Mannar and his co-researchers have developed cutting-edge technologies to enhance the nutritional quality of foods.
Mannar has been appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s greatest civilian honours, for his leadership in the global fight against malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency. He was also conferred with an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree by the University of Toronto.
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Jay G. Slowik
Research Scientist, Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry
Paul Scherrer Institute Switzerland
Mass spectrometry is a powerful tool for the analysis of aerosol composition. However, tradeoffs typically exist between the loss of chemical information due to thermal decomposition and/or ionization-induced fragmentation on the one hand, and lower time resolution and/or separated collection/analysis stages on the other. We address these issues through the development of an extractive electrospray ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer (EESI-TOF), which provides online, highly time-resolved measurements of aerosol composition without significant decomposition or fragmentation. Further, the EESI-TOF provides a versatile sampling/ionization framework, as by simply changing the composition of the primary spray and mass spectrometer polarity, the instrument can be configured to optimize detection of different organic fractions or water-soluble metals, while the sampling inlet can be configured to allow separate detection of the gas and particle phase. Two applications of the EESI-TOF are presented. First, we demonstrate rapid intra-particle decomposition reactions in secondary organic aerosol generated from the dark ozonolysis of α-pinene, as well as further reaction on the exposure of the aerosol to visible light. Second, we explore the sources and processes governing SOA composition in complex urban environments.
Low-Carbon Renewable Materials Center (LCRMC) Impact Series
Seeram Ramakrishna, FREng
National University of Singapore
Over the past several decades, humans have perfected technology to make
synthetic polymers. Thousands of varieties have been created with a range
of properties needed for diverse applications and mass production. The
resultant creation of cheap and ubiquitous plastic, however, has fostered a
throw away culture that is contributing to an unsustainable global build-up
of solid waste. Less than twenty percent of plastic waste worldwide is recycled
– with a significant portion being incinerated. One-third of plastic
waste ends up in nature, accounting for 100 million tons of plastic waste in
2016. According to WWF, at present rates, the ocean will contain one ton of
plastic for every three tons of fish by 2025 – and through the food chain,
humans are at risk of ingesting up to 5 grams of micro-plastics and
nano-plastics a week. Policy makers and the public are emphasizing the
need to reduce consumption of single-use plastics and set hard targets for
recycling of plastics by companies and municipalities – a processes requiring
improved digital tracking and methods of sorting. Companies are considering
redesigning products with single plastic material systems so as to facilitate
higher recycling rates, including the increased use of bio-plastics and
natural polymers. Meanwhile, researchers continue synthesizing new
plastics to improve reprocessing and biodegradablility whilst still o ering
desirable functional properties. Such developments are essential for establishing
national zero-waste/circular economies.
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Professor Seeram Ramakrishna, FREng is the Chair of Circular Economy
Taskforce at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is a member of
Enterprise Singapore NMC on ISO/TC323 on Circular Economy. He is an
advisor to the Singapore National Environmental Agency’s and a member
of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Committee on Future of Production-
Sustainability. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Springer NATURE Journal
Materials Circular. He is an editorial board member of NATURE Scienti c
Reports. He received a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK; and the
TGMP from the Harvard University, USA. He is named among the World’s
Most In uential Minds and the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials
Science by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics. His research interests
include innovations in sustainable materials and evaluation of circularity
of materials via life cycle assessment. In his lecture Materials for Engineers,
he teaches eco-design and life cycle engineering.
Dr. Helen Tran
Stanford University
Electronics that can be stretched like human skin and feature skin-inspired functionalities are opening doors for remarkable opportunities in health and environmental monitoring, next-generation consumer products, and sustainability. Notably, degradability is an attractive attribute for applications on dynamic surfaces where manual recovery would be prohibitively difficult and expensive. For example, fully biodegradable electronics promise to accelerate the integration of electronics with health by obviating the need for costly device recovery surgeries that also significantly increase infection risk. Moreover, the environmentally critical problem of discarded electronic waste would be relieved. A key component of such electronics is the development of a stretchable and degradable transistor with electrical performance independent of large mechanical stress. While numerous biodegradable insulators have been demonstrated as suitable device substrates and dielectrics for stretchable electronics, imparting biodegradability to electronically conducting and semiconducting materials for stretchable electronics presents a particular challenge due to the inherent resistance of most conductive chemistries to hydrolytic cleavage. Herein, we decouple the design of stretchability and transience by harmonizing polymer physics principles and molecular design in order to demonstrate for the first time a material that simultaneously possesses three disparate attributes: semiconductivity, intrinsic stretchability, and full degradability. We show that we can design acid-labile semiconducting polymers to appropriately phase segregate within a biodegradable elastomer, yielding semiconducting nanofibers which concurrently enable controlled transience and strain-independent transistor mobilities. This fully degradable semiconductor represents a promising advance towards developing multifunctional materials for skin-inspired electronic devices that can address previously inaccessible challenges and in turn create new technologies.
Professor Jim Field
College of Engineering,
University of Arizona, USA
Professor Jim FieldAnthropogenic nitro-organic compounds enter the environment through their use as explosives, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, solid fuels and fragrances. The aim of this project is to study the environmental fate of two new insensitive munitions constituents being deployed as new chemistries to reduce the incidences of accidental explosions. One of these is a heterocyclic, 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (NTO), and the other is an aromatic compound,2,4-dintroanisole (DNAN). In microbial cultures derived from soil, NTO is first reduced to 3-amino-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (ATO) and subsequently oxidized to benign mineral products (NH4+, N2 and CO2) by a consortium of 7 bacteria. DNAN is rapidly reduced to its amino counterpart, 2,4-diaminioanisole (DAAN). DAAN then becomes irreversibly covalently incorporated into natural organic matter (NOM) via rapid Michael addition reactions with quinone moieties in the NOM.
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Dr. Jim A. Field is a Full Professor of Environmental Engineering and Assistant Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Arizona. He received his PhD in environmental technology at Wageningen University (The Netherlands). Dr. Field conducts research on the biodegradation and biotransformation of environmental contaminants of concern. Dr. Field has published 275 peer-reviewed journal and has a Google Scholar H-index of 75 with 18,000 citations.