Expectations and Needs for Interaction in Human Robot Interaction

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-11-29) Feigh, Karen M.
Safe Humanoid Locomotion and Navigation: Challenges and Opportunities

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-11-29) Zhao, Ye
Practical Safety for Widespread Autonomy

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-11-29) Kousik, Shreyas
Renewable Electricity as a Feed Stock for the Chemical Industry

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-12-08) Moses, Poul Georg

Heavy industry and long-haul transportation are responsible for a large percentage of humanity's greenhouse-gas emissions. In these sectors, direct electrification is not enough. They need energy-dense green fuels – similar to the fuels used today, but made from renewable sources. In this presentation a set of solutions will be presented. Solutions based on combining proven technologies from the chemical industry with new technology to produce essential chemicals and fuels such as green hydrogen, green ammonia, eMethanol, and other clean fuels from non-fossil feedstocks such as biomass, waste and renewable electricity. The most critical new technology in terms of cost and energy loss is water electrolysis for hydrogen production. A deep dive on the most efficient electrolysis technology, high temperature solid oxide electrolysis will be given ranging from basic thermodynamics to process integration for chemicals production.
The Energy Transition and the Role of Direct Air Capture

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-11-17) Lackner, Klaus S.

The rapid drop in the price of renewable energy portends massive changes in the world’s energy infrastructure and offers hope that climate change can be addressed. Incumbent fossil fuel technologies, hamstrung by concerns over climate change, will are having difficulties to adapt to the new world. To avert a climate disaster, the energy transition must happen fast. However, it will likely take too long. Like any transition in a complex system, it very likely will introduce instabilities. Yet the transition must be executed flawlessly because, just like climate change, large-scale interruptions in energy services could have global catastrophic consequences. Growing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption are the main cause of climate change. Excess carbon dioxide will linger in the atmosphere for centuries. Decades of procrastination have put the world on a trajectory that will overshoot the climate targets set by the international community. The uncontrolled dumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will have to stop, and carbon excess will have to be removed from the environment. The scale of the necessary drawdown is far beyond the scope of capture by photosynthetic processes and storage in natural sinks. Direct capture of carbon dioxide from ambient air combined with technical carbon storage offers a scalable solution to this waste management problem. Eliminating all carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector and cleaning up prior emissions is a gargantuan task likely lead by renewable energy. Even though the intermittency of renewable energy poses a formidable challenge, renewable energy is already pushing into the market and is beginning to displace fossil energy sources. Yet, displacing oil and gas for long-term storage and transportation, especially aviation, will be difficult. However, production of synthetic fuels and substitutes for petrochemical from renewable energy, carbon dioxide and water will make abandoning carbonaceous fuels and materials unnecessary. Advances in direct air capture enable a complete transition to renewable energy without abandoning existing energy infrastructures and combine this transition with the necessary massive drawdown of excess carbon in the environment. We will discuss the technologic and economic requirements, consider possible pathways and highlight gaps in our current understanding. In summary, we argue that photovoltaic electricity should not be shoe-horned into the existing electricity grid but be fed into a large and diverse supply chain, that provides grid electricity, charges batteries for short term storage, produces a variety of fuels and chemicals, produces synthetic hydrocarbon storage to iron out variability in resource availability on timescales ranging from weeks to decades and lastly powers the drawdown of excess carbon from the environment. The least developed aspect of this vision is direct air capture technology. It appears within reach, but it will need a global development effort to succeed.
Reprogramming the Immune Response Through Biomolecular Engineering

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-10-20) Spangler, Jamie

The repertoire of naturally occurring proteins is finite and many molecules induce multiple confounding effects, limiting their efficacy as therapeutics. Recently, there has been a growing interest in redesigning existing proteins or engineering entirely new proteins to address the deficiencies of molecules found in nature. Researchers have traditionally taken an unbiased approach to protein engineering, but as our knowledge of protein structure-function relationships advances, we have the exciting opportunity to apply molecular principles to guide engineering. Leveraging cutting-edge tools and technologies in structural biology and molecular design, our lab is pioneering a unique structure-based engineering approach to elucidate the mechanistic determinants of protein activity, in order to inform therapeutic development. Our group is particularly interested in engineering immune proteins, such as cytokines, growth factors, and antibodies, to bias the immune response for targeted disease treatment. Despite the recent explosive growth of protein drugs within the pharmaceutical market, limitations such as delivery, acquired resistance, and toxicity have impeded realization of the full potential of these therapeutics, necessitating new approaches that synergize with existing strategies to address clinically unmet needs. This talk will highlight ongoing work in our lab that spans the discovery, design, and translation of novel molecular immunotherapeutics for applications ranging from cancer to autoimmune disorders to regenerative medicine.
Thinking About Data: Representations, Transformations, and Applications

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-10-13) Zavala, Victor M.

A dataset can be represented in different mathematical forms; for example, a micrograph can be represented as an image, as a matrix, as a graph (network), or as an intensity function. These representations are used to perform transformations of the data with the goal of extracting different types of features such as spatial patterns, geometrical patterns, correlations, principal components, gradients of light, and frequencies. These features contain key information that facilitate visualization and analysis, detection of abnormalities, and construction of predictive models. In this talk, we show how to use representations and transformations in innovative ways to analyze complex datasets arising in flow cytometry, liquid crystals, chemical processes, and molecular dynamics. We show how these tools can be used to design chemical sensors for the detection of contaminants in air and liquid mixtures, to predict reaction rates for acid-catalyzed reactions, to predict material properties from images, and to detect faults.
Progress Towards the Industrialization of Electrochemical CO2 Reduction

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-10-06) Flake, John
Electrokinetics, Transport and Stability of Metal/Electrolyte Interfaces in Secondary Batteries

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-10-30) Archer, Lynden A.
Shape-Selective Growth of Nanoscale Materials: Insights From Multi-Scale Theory and Simulation

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-10-16) Fichthorn, Kristen

Metal nanocrystals have gained tremendous attention due to their superior performance in various applications, ranging from selective catalysis to electronic devices to plasmonic applications, such as photovoltaics and sensing. The properties of nanocrystals are highly sensitive to their size and shape. To this end, solution-phase synthetic protocols have been highly successful at producing a variety of nanocrystal structures. However, great challenges remain in achieving high selectivity to particular nanostructures. A significant difficulty lies in understanding and controlling shape evolution in these systems. A deep, fundamental understanding of the phenomena that promote selective growth in these syntheses would enable tight control of nanostructure morphologies in next-generation techniques. I will discuss our efforts to understand the workings of PVP, a polymer capping molecule that facilitates the formation of selective Ag nanoparticle shapes. In these studies, we use first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) to characterize the binding of PVP repeat units to Ag(100) and Ag(111) surfaces. To understand the solution-phase binding of PVP to these Ag surfaces, we develop a new metal-organic many-body force field with high fidelity to DFT. We implement this force field into molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations to characterize the potential of mean force and the mean first-passage times for solution-phase Ag atoms to reach PVP-covered Ag facets. Using these mean first-passage times, we predict kinetic shapes of large Ag nanocrystals (around 100 nm) and show that these should be {100}-faceted cubes. We also use MD simulations to characterize the interfacial free energies of PVP-covered Ag facets in solution. The thermodynamic shapes that we predict in these calculations are truncated octahedra, with a predominance of {111} facets. These findings are consistent with experimental observations that sufficiently small Ag nanocrystals tend to have shapes with a predominance of {111} facets and larger nanocrystals become {100}-faceted during solution-phase growth in the presence of PVP. Though our studies are consistent with experiments that demonstrate nanocube growth can be directed by PVP alone, many studies have demonstrated that more robust nanocube syntheses can be achieved in the presence of halide additives. We use DFT-based ab initio thermodynamics calculations to probe the influence of chloride on Ag nanoshapes. Consistent with experiment, these calculations indicate that chloride adsorption alone can lead to truncated Ag cubes. “Late breaking” calculations indicate there is a synergistic interaction between Cl and PVP, whereby the combination of these two additives can lead to “pointy” Ag cubes.