Lifeboat Foundation

Tech billionaires are funding research into controversial methods for cooling the planet.

By Corbin Hiar & E&E News

Editor’s note: This story is part of Meet a UChicagoan, a regular series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community. Read about the others here.

Wide is the spectrum of scientific inquiry, ranging from the philosophical— What is information?—to the banal — Where did I put that Allen wrench?

For University of Chicago graduate student Chloe Washabaugh, there is joy to be found in all of it. A Ph.D. student in quantum engineering at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Washabaugh fashions molecules into tiny quantum information processors, designing them to sense, send or store data—whatever the need.

In the realm of quantum mechanics, the ability to observe and control quantum phenomena at room temperature has long been elusive, especially on a large or “macroscopic” scale. Traditionally, such observations have been confined to environments near absolute zero, where quantum effects are easier to detect. But the requirement for extreme cold has been a major hurdle, limiting practical applications of quantum technologies.

Now, a study led by Tobias J. Kippenberg and Nils Johan Engelsen at EPFL, redefines the boundaries of what’s possible. The pioneering work blends quantum physics and mechanical engineering to achieve control of quantum phenomena at room temperature.

“Reaching the regime of room temperature quantum optomechanics has been an open challenge since decades,” says Kippenberg. “Our work realizes effectively the Heisenberg microscope—long thought to be only a theoretical toy model.”

Scientists have created a wood pulp hydrogel to strengthen anti-cancer medications and restore damaged cardiac tissue.

Now that they have created a novel hydrogel that can be utilised to repair damaged heart tissue and enhance cancer therapies, you can cure a broken heart on Valentine’s Day, according to SciTech Daily.

Dr Elisabeth Prince, a researcher in chemical engineering at the University of Waterloo, collaborated with scientists from Duke University and the University of Toronto to design a synthetic material that is made of wood pulp-derived cellulose nanocrystals. The material’s unique biomechanical qualities are recreated by engineering it to mimic the fibrous nanostructures and characteristics of human tissues.

Researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) have unveiled a promising photoelectrochemical (PEC) system capable of generating green hydrogen on a large scale.

The team introduces an innovative approach utilizing formamidinium lead triiodide (FAPbI₃) perovskite-based photoanodes, encapsulated by a robust Ni foil/NiFeOOH electrocatalyst.

Speaking to Tech Xplore, Jae Sung Lee, Professor of Energy & Chemical Engineering at UNIST and co-author of the paper, highlighted the critical need for efficiency in solar-to-hydrogen (STH) conversion, emphasizing that a minimum of 10% STH efficiency is essential for practical PEC systems. “Our group has thoroughly studied the challenges associated with practical solar hydrogen production,” Lee added.

If realized using solar energy or other renewable energy, water splitting could be a promising way of sustainably producing hydrogen (H₂) on a large-scale. Most photoelectrochemical water splitting systems proposed so far, however, have been found to be either inefficient, unstable, or difficult to implement on a large-scale.

Researchers at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) recently set out to develop a scalable and efficient photoelectrochemical (PEC) system to produce green hydrogen. Their proposed system, outlined in Nature Energy, is based on an innovative formamidinium lead triiodide (FAPbI₃) perovskite-based photoanode, encapsulated by an Ni foil/NiFeOOH electrocatalyst.

“Our group has thoroughly studied the challenges associated with practical solar hydrogen production,” Jae Sung Lee, Professor of Energy & Chemical Engineering at UNIST and co-author of the paper, told Tech Xplore. “As summarized in our most recent review paper, minimum 10% of solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency is required to develop viable practical PEC system, for which selecting an efficient material is the first criteria.”

Qubits are the building block for quantum technology, and finding or building qubits that are stable and easily manipulated is one of the central goals of quantum technology research. Scientists have found that an atom of erbium—a rare-earth metal sometimes used in lasers or to color glass—can be a very effective qubit.

To make erbium qubits, erbium atoms are placed in “host materials,” where the erbium atoms replace some of the material’s original atoms. Two research groups—one at quantum startup memQ, a Chicago Quantum Exchange corporate partner, and one at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, a CQE member—have used different host materials for erbium to advance quantum technology, demonstrating the versatility of this kind of qubit and highlighting the importance of materials science to quantum computing and quantum communication.

The two projects address challenges that quantum computing researchers have been trying to solve: engineering multi-qubit devices and extending the amount of time qubits can hold information.

Stefan Wilhelm, an associate professor in the Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, and several students in his Biomedical Nano-Engineering Lab have recently published an article in the journal Nano Letters (“Toward the Scalable, Rapid, Reproducible, and Cost-Effective Synthesis of Personalized Nanomedicines at the Point of Care”) that outlines their recent important nanomedicine advancement.

The group examined how to create tools that produce nanomedicines, such as vaccine formulations, directly at the point of care. In doing so, the large centralized facilities, shipping challenges, and extreme cold storage challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic would no longer limit vaccine distribution.

Wilhelm, with student researchers such as Hamilton Young, a senior biomedical engineering student, and Yuxin He, a biomedical engineering graduate research assistant, used 3D printer parts to mix fluid streams together containing the building blocks of nanomedicines and their payloads in a T-mixer format.

It’s possible to start a subscale deployment in just a few years. The climate effects would be tiny, but the geopolitical impact could be significant.