Ecological Systems
The central focus of our research and education is on integrative ecology: we do field, experimental, and theoretical work. We develop quantitative tools and combine them with field and lab experiments to increase our understanding of the functioning of ecosystem services and the maintenance of biodiversity. We investigate the intricate relationship between environmental conditions and living organisms, ranging from individuals to entire ecological communities.
Key areas include:
Community ecology
Mathematical/quantitative ecology
Microbiomes
Ecological networks
Terrestrial Ecology
Resources and Sustainability
Food, water, air, energy, materials. Civilization cannot survive without them. They are the resources that keep us functioning. We are looking to revolutionize those resources. We want them to be more accessible, a higher quality, more sustainable. We focus on natural and human-made resources, their extraction, generation, and interaction with the environment.
Key areas include:
Water, e.g. the SMART Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling (CENSAM)
Atmosphere & air quality, e.g.: air pollution impacts on global crop yields; regional hotspots where climate change may severely impact human habitability
Food & agriculture, e.g.: bacterial viruses as pathogen control agents in aquaculture systems; gravity fingering during water infiltration in soil: impact on the resilience of crops and vegetation in water-stressed ecosystems
Energy, e.g.: hydraulic fracturing and fracture flow in rocks; reservoir-on-a-chip; simulating fracture in geomaterials
Material sourcing, e.g. transforming animal waste to bio-binder and bio-petroleum
Coastal resilience, e.g.: green infrastructure: vegetated landscapes and coastal protection
Structures and Design
Structures represent the material backbone of society, including both physical and virtual entities. Domains of interest include systems that facilitate transportation of resources and people from places of generation to the locale of consumption. We strive to make structures stronger, more sustainable, and more effective. We challenge the paradigm of traditional structures such as roads and bridges, but also the production and delivery of drinking water, find solutions for airport congestion, and help eliminate public waste.
Key areas include:
Infrastructure materials, e.g.: ancient technologies and durable building materials, the concrete sustainability hub
Intelligent structures (roads, bridges, buildings), e.g.: sustainability of Kuwait’s built environment
Energy infrastructure
Cyber-physical systems, e.g.: situational awareness framework for cybersecurity event prediction and quantification (SAFFRON)
Bio-inspired design, e.g. additive manufacturing of novel composites through a materials-by-design approach.
Urban Systems
Permanent human settlements generally need complex systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing, and transportation. We challenge the status quo of mobility, energy use, and logistics. Where there are cities, there are suburbs and rural areas that function as their own entities. There are coastal systems that are complex systems in themselves.
Key areas include:
Transportation, e.g.: mobility electronic market for optimized travel (MeMOT); the SMART “Future Mobility” project; the road to future urban mobility; estimating social welfare of traffic information systems
Networks, e.g. motion coordination and vision-based control of unmanned air and ground vehicles; resilient design of networked infrastructure systems: models, validation, and synthesis;
Sensing and data mining, e.g.: mining big data to link affordable housing policy with traffic congestion mitigation in Beijing, China
Urban and regional systems, e.g. a simulation-based optimization algorithm for dynamic large-scale urban transportation problems.
Global Systems
Climate change, air quality, infectious diseases, and oceans. None of those issues are limited to one country, or continent, they affect multiple countries and are controlled by global dynamics. Global systems span wide in reach in terms of spatial scale and impact and encompass connections between small and large. We focus on issues impacting the entire globe and associated natural and human-made systems.
Key areas include:
Population growth (e.g. urbanization)
Climate, e.g.: modeling the aerosols in our atmosphere
Oceans, e.g. the global genetic repertoire of Prochlorococcus
Global health, e.g. from regional pulse vaccination to global disease eradication
Logistics and supply chains, e.g. Ford’s Supply Chain: The Challenge
System dynamics, e.g. what malaria and dengue can tell us about Zika
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