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2025 Right Here, Right Now Global Summit

Daniel Morton — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 22:52:54 +0000

2025 Right Here, Right Now Global Summit Daniel Morton Fri, 06/13/2025 - 16:52

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2022 RHRN Summit

2025 RHRN Summit

2025 CU 51��ý Session

2025 CU 51��ý Today Article

In December of 2022 CU 51��ý was the host for inaugural Right Here, Right Now United Nations Human Rights Global Summit, the organization of which engaged a number of RASEI fellows.

In 2025, the second Right Here, Right Now Global Summit was hosted by the University of Oxford. To highlight the global nature of the challenges faced a 24 hour global plenary session was undertaken. The cornerstone of the summit, this hybrid global event brought together leading thinkers and practitioners at the intersection of climate change and human rights. This session was broadcast live across all timezones. Co-created by Universities across the world, the plenary followed the sun as the baton was passed between different regions.

CU 51��ý hosted a live session starting on June 5, 2025 at 9 AM MT. The session featured a keynote address from Sheila Watt-Cloutier and a panel discussion on pollution, water insecurity and human migration with CU 51��ý students John Edem Ecklu, Naia Zulueta, and CU 51��ý Associate Professor Amanda Carrico. Introductory remarks were made by Tonni Brodber and the sessions were moderated by NPR’s Lakshmi Singh.

The panel discussion brought together a range of perspectives and brought the audience into the discussion. The keynote highlighted the long-term commitment of Watt-Cloutier to appealing to the human side of climate change and the importance of how this impacts not only her community but everyone. Watt-Cloutier stated that she believes that one of the most important things we can be doing is educating people about the human impacts of climate change, that this can be an effective way to bring people together, even in times of political uncertainty and conflict.

“We are all in this together, as a common humanity,” Watt-Cloutier said. She described the Arctic as a sentinel for climate change and urged others to rediscover their bonds with the land. “In the Arctic, we just absolutely love our land, and indigenous peoples around the world are the same. We love nature because of what it gives us, and the love allows us to be stronger in our fight to defend our way of life”

“Do things that bring you back to nature and you will start to protect what you love”

June 2025

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Understanding light-driven production of hydrogen could unlock future insights for harnessing light for chemistry

Daniel Morton — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 16:27:04 +0000

Understanding light-driven production of hydrogen could unlock future insights for harnessing light for chemistry Daniel Morton Mon, 06/09/2025 - 10:27

Daniel Morton

Light to fuel: clean hydrogen production. Improved understanding of the light-driven production of hydrogen holds the promise not just to make the reaction more efficient in producing a fuel, but also to offer a framework to better understand future light-driven chemistries.

Many chemical reactions require the input of energy to activate the transformation. This can often be in the form of heat, or chemical energy. One of the most efficient ways of introducing energy into a reaction is by using light. If you don’t have to heat up a reaction, or add extra chemicals to it, and instead shine a light on it, you can save significant energy. However, it can be difficult to control and optimize light-driven reactions. This research, just published in Chem, is a collaboration between the Dukovic Group at the University of Colorado 51��ý (CU 51��ý) and the King Group at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and provides a holistic understanding of the light-driven production of hydrogen gas using a nanocrystal-enzyme complex as the catalyst, and a computational framework that can be used more generally to understand other light-driven chemical reactions in the future. The code for this model is being made available in the supplementary documents of this article.

Chemical catalysis is a special type of reaction, one that increases the speed of a transformation and often reduces the amount of waste produced by the process. Think of it like an assembly line. The catalyst is like a station on the line, bringing together two or more components to create a new product that is then passed along. Without the catalyst the components might, by chance, bump together and form the desired product, but it will be much slower, and much less frequent. The catalyst remains unchanged in the process and can repeat the transformation many times.

Enzymes are Nature’s catalysts. On the cellular level, whenever a change needs to happen, an enzyme is usually involved. The speed of an enzyme, and its selectivity, that is its ability to only react with the desired molecules out of the soup of molecules present in a typical cell, is fantastic. Enzymes are often superior to catalysts we can make in a lab, and as such, much research has gone into finding ways to harness such enzymes to do reactions for us in the lab. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as just grabbing some enzyme out of a cell. Enzymes often require specific environments and partners to react with.

Redox enzymes are a special, and particularly attractive, class of enzymes. They are capable of adding, or removing, an electron from a chemical reaction, a key step in the production of hydrogen gas. Redox enzymes rarely exist by themselves. Returning to the assembly line analogy, to get a station that can add the electrons to the protons (H⁺) to make hydrogen gas, many other stations need to be added before in a specific order. In a cell there is a chain of enzymes that pass the electrons along before the reaction can take place.

This is where the artificial component comes in. The nanocrystal, which, when exposed to light, releases an electron, replaces the long chain of enzymes and can directly transfer an electron to the enzyme. So, you reduce your assembly line down from a chain of many stations to just two. “This work was really only possible through collaboration” explains Gordana Dukovic, the lead researcher at CU 51��ý. “The team at NREL have vast expertise in hydrogenase (the redox enzyme that creates hydrogen gas), and we have the expertise in making and tailoring the nanocrystals and studying what they do after they absorb light”. Getting the enzyme to work with the artificial electron donor took some work.

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This Research

Characterization of Photochemical Processes

Electron Transfer Kinetics

Competition between electron transfer processes

Activation Thermodynamics

Role of Surface-Capping Ligands

Quantum Efficiency of Charge Transfer

2020 Review of this research area

The two teams first started working together in 2011 and have invested a great deal of work in understanding many aspects of this nanocrystal-enzyme hybrid. “Working with the team at NREL has been really amazing” says Dukovic, “the opportunity to work with experts who really help you ask the important questions, and identify where our assumptions were wrong, was essential for this work.” For over more than a decade this collaboration has interrogated the different steps of this process, such as how the nanocrystal and enzyme fit together, how the nanocrystal generates an electron when exposed to light, how the nanocrystal transfers the electron to the enzyme, and how the enzyme uses those electrons to make hydrogen. It is only through building this comprehensive understanding of the steps that underpin this reaction that the team are in the position to provide a holistic picture of the whole transformation. Furthermore, the framework that they have built is robust enough to be applied in improving other light-driven reactions in the future.

This work describes an improved assembly line capable of converting light energy into hydrogen gas, a clean burning fuel that provides new, more efficient ways, to generate electricity. Perhaps more excitingly, it demonstrates the power of a new computational model and framework, built on over a decade of collaborative research, which has been made freely available, that provides insights into light-driven reactions and can be used by the scientific community to refine and optimize future light-driven chemistry. Helena Keller, the lead author is enthusiastic about the next steps “We are in a really exciting place now, where the capabilities of using computational methods to understand complex systems like this are becoming more and more accessible. The better we understand how to control processes at the smallest scales – like at the level of individual electron transfers – the closer we get to revolutionizing the way we produce energy and materials for the good of the world”.

June 2025

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RASEI Fellow Kat Knauer selected as member of the 2025 C&EN’s Talented 12

Daniel Morton — Fri, 23 May 2025 18:27:40 +0000

RASEI Fellow Kat Knauer selected as member of the 2025 C&EN’s Talented 12 Daniel Morton Fri, 05/23/2025 - 12:27

Daniel Morton

Kat has been highlighted for her work developing sustainable and recyclable plastics.

2025 Talented 12 Press Release

2025 Talented 12 Overview

Kat Knauer Profile

For the last decade Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly industrial press for the chemistry and chemical engineering fields published by the American Chemical Society (ACS), has selected a dozen early-career scientists to highlight. Each year the Talented 12 introduces researchers from across disciplines who are using their chemistry know-how to make societal impacts.

This year more than 350 young chemists and chemical engineers were nominated, which was whittled down to 12 by the panel reviewing the different impacts of the research. Research done by members of the class include materials that could help hearts heal, measuring aerosol particles to understand climate change, controlling charged particles to improve energy efficiency, using biology to solve environmental problems, explaining chemical movement with math, understanding pollutants, preventing drug side effects, providing insights into disease, improving food security, transforming waste water into valuable minerals and harnessing electrons to clean chemicals.

RASEI Fellow Kat Knauer was highlighted for her research on developing sustainable and recyclable plastics, driven by her passion for solving the plastic waste crisis. Check out the full story about the Talented 12 and the profile on Kat Knauer for all the details.

May 2025

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Ocean microbes offer clues to environmental resilience

Daniel Morton — Fri, 16 May 2025 19:57:34 +0000

Ocean microbes offer clues to environmental resilience Daniel Morton Fri, 05/16/2025 - 13:57

May 2025

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14th Annual Front Range Energy and Environmental Economics Camp

Daniel Morton — Fri, 16 May 2025 19:15:17 +0000

14th Annual Front Range Energy and Environmental Economics Camp Daniel Morton Fri, 05/16/2025 - 13:15

Daniel Morton

This May CU 51��ý hosted the 14^th Annual Front Range Energy and Environmental Economics Camp. Held at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences on the CU 51��ý Campus, this two-day meeting brought together researchers from across the Front Range region, including participants from CU 51��ý, Colorado State University, University of Wyoming, Colorado School of Mines, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and included guests from as far away as British Columbia (Thompson Rivers University).

The meeting brought together an interdisciplinary mix of interested participants to consider a wide range of topics, cutting across the academy, government and private sectors. Topics of discussion included small modular reactors, retail electricity, rural electrification, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, electrification of trucks, and renewable energy generation and systems.

Thanks to all who presented and participated and looking forward to next year’s camp!

May 2025

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Salt isn't just good for food, it improves perovskites solar harvesting properties as well

Daniel Morton — Thu, 01 May 2025 01:44:45 +0000

Salt isn't just good for food, it improves perovskites solar harvesting properties as well Daniel Morton Wed, 04/30/2025 - 19:44

April 2025

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RASEI Fellows develop sustainable solutions to address AI increases in energy demand

Daniel Morton — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 20:18:56 +0000

RASEI Fellows develop sustainable solutions to address AI increases in energy demand Daniel Morton Wed, 04/16/2025 - 14:18

April 2025

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Emeritus RASEI Fellow Carrie Eckert elected as Director of the SIMB

Daniel Morton — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:36:11 +0000

Emeritus RASEI Fellow Carrie Eckert elected as Director of the SIMB Daniel Morton Tue, 04/15/2025 - 18:36

Daniel Morton

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SIMB

Press Release

In April of 2025 RASEI Fellow Emeritus Carrie Eckert was recently elected as Director of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, or SIMB.

The SIMB is a nonprofit international association of scientists, dedicated to the advancement of the microbiological sciences, specifically in their application to industrial products, biotechnology and materials.

Founded in 1949, SIMB promotes the exchange of scientific information through meetings, conferences, publications, and reports. Serving as liaison between the specialized fields of microbiology.

Carrie Eckert, who moved from RASEI to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2021, was elected as the new Director of SIMB. Carrie’s research explores the development and application of genetic tools for microbial metabolic engineering, with an emphasis on high throughput libraries using CRISPR-Cas systems for functional genomics toward industrial applications.

Congratulations to Carrie on her election, and excited to see the progress with SIMB!

April 2025

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Climate Innovation Collaboratory awards $1M to tackle key sustainability challenges

Daniel Morton — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 16:19:12 +0000

Climate Innovation Collaboratory awards $1M to tackle key sustainability challenges Daniel Morton Tue, 04/15/2025 - 10:19

April 2025

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RASEI Physicist Recognized for Pioneering Materials Research

Daniel Morton — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 16:49:21 +0000

RASEI Physicist Recognized for Pioneering Materials Research Daniel Morton Fri, 03/28/2025 - 10:49

Daniel Morton

In a celebration of scientific excellence, RASEI Fellow Ivan Smalyukh has been named a 2024 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), joining an elite group of 471 distinguished scientists, engineers, and innovators.

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College Press Release

AAAS Press Release

A Journey of Scientific Discovery

Smalyukh's remarkable journey in science began in Ukraine, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees with highest honors from Lviv Polytechnic National University in 1994 and 1995. After completing his PhD in chemical physics from Kent State University in 2003, he joined CU 51��ý's faculty in 2007, quickly establishing himself as a pioneering researcher in materials science.

Cutting-Edge Research with a Purpose

What sets Smalyukh apart is not just his scientific research, but his commitment to addressing global challenges. His research spans an impressive range of fields, including:

Soft-condensed-matter physics
Optical physics
Liquid crystal properties
Nano-structured materials
Photonic and electro-optic applications

"We aspire to uncover fundamental physical principles underlying material properties," Smalyukh explains. "But our ultimate goal is practical – to contribute to a sustainable future by designing innovative materials that can help reduce energy demand and combat climate change."

A Multifaceted Scientist

Beyond his primary appointment in physics, Smalyukh's expertise extends across multiple disciplines. He holds courtesy appointments in electrical and computer engineering and is a fellow of RASEI.

Recognition and Impact

Smalyukh's contributions have not gone unnoticed. He has previously been honored with:

Fellow of the American Physical Society
Department of Energy Early Career Research Award
National Science Foundation CAREER Award

When reflecting on this latest honor, Smalyukh's gratitude shines through. "I am especially grateful to the many students and postdocs who have worked with me over nearly 20 years at CU 51��ý," he said, highlighting the collaborative nature of scientific discovery.

A Continuing Legacy

With this AAAS fellowship, Smalyukh joins 80 other CU 51��ý professors who have received this prestigious recognition since 1981. His work continues to push the boundaries of what's possible in materials science, offering hope for more sustainable and innovative solutions to global challenges.

March 2025

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