On July 31, 2025, Lehigh University’s Mountaintop Campus hosted its annual Summer Research Day Expo, a showcase of nearly 100 student projects across science, engineering, social impact, and entrepreneurship. For the first time, fellows from the Lehigh University Research Translation AcceLUrator (RTA) Bootcamp joined the event, presenting six projects developed during their 10-week program. Among them, RTA fellow Jeremiah Akalu stood out for his award-winning machine learning research on real-time electric power system resiliency. Akalu, a fellow from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, presented not one but two posters on his team’s Seed Translation Research Project (STRP). Working under the guidance of Dr. Javad (Pouya) Khazaei, alongside teammates Mehdi Akbari and Maral Shadei (who were simultaneously presenting related work at the IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting in Austin, Texas), Akalu showcased research aimed at improving the reliability and resilience of modern power systems. The team’s project has two promising applications. One, in partnership with the Department of Naval Research, explores how to track and regulate the status of Navy ships. The other uses machine learning to simulate urban power systems, including electricity, water, and transportation networks, to predict vulnerabilities and protect critical infrastructure. This is specifically honed in for emergency preparedness in the event of severe weather or other potential catastrophic events. Akalu received first place in the Research Day Awards for the Research Category. The recognition highlighted not only the rigor of the team’s work but also Akalu’s ability to communicate complex technical concepts in a clear and compelling way as the sole presenter at the expo. This accomplishment also highlights the growing impact of the Research Translation AcceLUrator, which provides fellows with the tools and mentorship to move their research beyond the lab. Through this summer bootcamp’s resources, like the RTA Speaker Series, NSF’s I-Corps™ training, and guidance from faculty such as Dr. Khazaei, Akalu and his team are already translating their work into practice. Currently piloted to monitor Lehigh University’s own power systems, the research is poised to expand to larger-scale applications in the years ahead. #LehighUniversity #LehighRTA #NSFfunded #ResearchDay #SummerResearch #ResearchTranslation #InnovationInAction #EnergyResilience #MachineLearning #STEMResearch #ResearchToImpact

Assistant professors Yue Dong (computer science and engineering) and Amanda Rupiper (chemical and environmental engineering) have been named 2025–26 Hellman Fellows. Their innovative research spans trustworthy artificial intelligence and sustainable water and energy use—tackling some of today’s most urgent global challenges. The Hellman Fellowship provides early-career faculty with critical support to advance their research on the path to tenure. Read more about their work: https://ow.ly/UasP50WQSvc #EngineeringResearch #HigherEd #AcademicExcellence

🚨 New Course Alert: IF 405 - Scientific Investigations into Artworks We are thrilled to announce that a new interfaculty course, IF 405, will be offered starting in Fall 2025 semester. 📚 This course integrates core principles of materials science with the interdisciplinary demands of cultural heritage and artwork preservation. This course is designed to bridge fundamental materials science, such as the structure, properties, and degradation of materials, with its application to historical and artistic artefacts. Students will explore the characterisation and analysis of complex, often aged or altered materials, gaining insight into deterioration mechanisms influenced by environmental, chemical, and biological factors. Please check out the video for further details. Feray Bakan Misirlioglu #SabancıUniversity #Undergraduate #New #Course #OurStrengthForTheFuture

Developed by the American Geosciences Institute and distributed by Activate Learning, EarthComm offers a full-year, NGSS-aligned curriculum that transforms students into Earth-system thinkers. With a three-dimensional, project-based approach, EarthComm empowers students to: ✅ Think like scientists and engineers ✅ Use the Engineering Design Cycle ✅ Tackle real-world environmental challenges ✅ Apply systems thinking to local and global phenomena From robust student materials to teacher professional learning, EarthComm offers total support for successful implementation at the secondary level. 🔗 Learn more: https://hubs.li/Q03F2TLg0 #STEMEducation #EarthScience #ProjectBasedLearning #NGSS #ScienceCurriculum #ActivateLearning

Bone by bone, Kelly Ng ’26 is building a deeper understanding of evolution—and of herself as a scientist. 🦇 Through the Provost’s Student-Faculty Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry program, this biology major is studying flight in Egyptian fruit bats with Professor David Boerma, PhD, using 3D modeling and hands-on research that’s as technical as it is transformative. Tap the link to read how Kelly’s work could reshape how we understand movement and mentorship: https://brnw.ch/21wV87z

Three students share takeaways from their summer research experience 🔬 This year, dozens of undergraduate students worked in labs, collected samples, and learned new techniques over the summer through programs offered out of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Featured: Steven Liu, a Stanford student studying chemical engineering who worked on lithium metal batteries as part of the Summer Undergraduate Program on Energy Research (SUPER) Jonathan Juarez, a data science and economics student at Cal Poly Humboldt who worked on near real-time monitoring of human-caused emissions through the Sustainability Undergraduate Research in Geoscience and Engineering Program (SURGE) Emma Beharry, a computer science student at Stanford who worked on an AI model to predict the relationship between floods and disease outbreaks through the Sustainability, Engineering and Science - Undergraduate Research (SESUR) program

🚨 New Course Alert: IF 405 - Scientific Investigations into Artworks We are thrilled to announce that a new interfaculty course, IF 405, will be offered starting in Fall 2025 semester. 📚 This course integrates core principles of materials science with the interdisciplinary demands of cultural heritage and artwork preservation. This course is designed to bridge fundamental materials science, such as the structure, properties, and degradation of materials, with its application to historical and artistic artefacts. Students will explore the characterisation and analysis of complex, often aged or altered materials, gaining insight into deterioration mechanisms influenced by environmental, chemical, and biological factors. Please check out the poster for further details. And stay tuned - we will be sharing an introductory video soon 🎥 Feray Bakan Misirlioglu #SabancıUniversity #Undergraduate #New #Course #OurStrengthForTheFuture

🎉 Celebrating European research success at Imperial! 🔬 🏅 Nine researchers at Imperial College London have received highly prestigious and competitive funding awards from the European Research Council (ERC) – including ESE's Dr Fred Richards! 🌊 With the new ERC Starting Grant (a €1.5 million award to support outstanding researchers to establish their own teams), Dr Richards will lead the Earth2Sea project, which aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of sea-level forecasts by uncovering how deep Earth processes can influence the rise and fall of sea levels over time. 💬 Dr Richards said: "Earth2Sea aims to address this worrying knowledge gap by developing data-driven computational models to reconstruct the history of Earth’s mantle flow from 50 million years ago to the present-day. This grant will allow the delivery of much-needed improvements to sea-level forecasts far faster than would otherwise be possible. "I’ll be recruiting PhD students in the coming months and would love to hear from you if you’re interested in working on solid-Earth—ice-sheet interactions!" ⭐ Congratulations to Dr Richards and the other recipients! Read more about the new ERC-funded projects here: https://lnkd.in/eb-8PQkk #ERC #HorizonEurope

Scientists at Tampere University of Applied Sciences split a single photon into two, demonstrating that it still has angular momentum. https://bit.ly/3UZbG8a

Since 30 years back, we have at least two types of LCA. We call them attributional and consequential LCA. LCA experts do not agree on when they should be used. We also do not agree on whether substitution fits in attributional LCA. The distinction between attributional and consequential LCA has a potential to help guide methodological choices. It can also help explaining the meaning of LCA results. However, this requires a common and carefully developed understanding of what the two types of LCA are. I have been teaching this week at the PhD course in LCA, well arranged by Rickard Arvidsson and Dalia Abdelfattah Yacout. My first lecture was on attributional and consequential LCA. It was followed by a short but good debate with my highly respected colleague Göran Finnveden. Let me know if you want the slides from my lecture. I can send them if we are connected on LinkedIn or if I have your email address. The slides contain much material that you have seen before if you've been following me for a while. Btw, I got a book chapter on attributional and consequential LCA published in 2019 (see https://lnkd.in/d7enkvtt). I still stand by what is in that chapter; however, I have since then learned to respect that LCA experts disagree on what methods fit in attributional LCA. For this reason, I now see a need to take the discussion one step deeper. #lifecycleassessment #LCA #attributional #consequential #allocation #substitution #swedishlifecyclecenter