New NSF Funding: Course Improvement Grant

Drs. Landis and Bilec in collaboration with Dr. Rizzo of Pitt's CEE Structures group were just awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to 'Integrate Sustainability into the Civil Engineering Curriculum Through Three Courses at the University of Pittsburgh.' We will be developing cross-course curriculum and laboratory activities for Design for the Environment (DfE), Introduction to Nondestructive Evaluation and Structural Health Monitoring (NDE), and Green Buildings: Design and Construction. (See our education page for more info on our classes.)

Some examples of these innovative educational activities include teaching students in all three courses to conduct energy audits of buildings using Infrared Thermography. Students will also be installing sensors in the new building housing the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation in order to monitor indoor air quality in buildings.

Students Maria Fer Padilla and Kullapa Soratana using the IR Camera.
Dr. Landis (PI), Dr. Bilec, and Dr. Rizzo (Co-PIs, L to R).

Advanced Biofuels Leadership Conference

The ABLC commenced this morning with invigorating presentations from the DC legislation. Invigorating because they all called for the biofuels company leaders present to make sure that what they're doing is truly sustainable. YES! That's what we're about at SGD!

While this is exciting, Valri Lightner of DOE noted that there aren't defined or agreed upon sustainability indicators or metrics. DOE grants and loans don't require companies to prove that they are exploring sustainable technologies or at the very least are monitoring sustainability. Hello... Life Cycle Assessment people!!

While metrics aren't defined by the agencies, I think that there are some clearly unarguable ones:

• don't use more feedstock than is available
• don't increase life cycle GWP or water emissions
  
• don't increase tailpipe emissions
  

and some tips:

• monitor those tradeoffs!
• diversify your portfolio- don't look for that silver bullet solution in just cellulose or just algae.

more to come as the Conference progresses...

We are under Construction

We're just getting started... give us a few days to update the pages and links.
-Amy Landis, Assistant Professor, Sustainability & Green Design at Pitt