April 25, 2018, 11:30-12:30pm Come hear the perspective of five new female assistant professors in Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Computer Science & Engineering, about applying for faculty positions, transitioning from graduate school to faculty, faculty candidate interviews and offer letters, and more!
Dr. Astrid Layton (myself), Dr. Stephanie Paal, Dr. Maria Koliou, Dr. Dorrin Jarrahbashi, and Dr. Theodora Chaspari will all be sharing lessons learned from their experiences.
The Sustainable Development Goals are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. The Goals interconnect and in order to leave no one behind, it ís important that we achieve each Goal and target by 2030. Click here to learn more about each issue…
The work being done in the BiSSL lab can be related to:
Collaborative work on “Matrix Trays: From Waste To Opportunities” between Dr. Astrid Layton, Dr. Ahmed Ali from Architecture, and Dr. Ankit Srivastava from Material Science and Engineering has resulted in tae T3 award from Texas A&M’s Presidents Excellence Fund. T3: Texas A&M Triads for Transformation is a multidisciplinary seed-grant program that is part of the President’s Excellence Fund designed to further Texas A&M University’s commitments to the three pillars of advancing transformational learning; enhancing discovery and innovation and expanding impact on our community, state, nation, and world.
The first initiative in the 10-year, $100 million President’s Excellence Fund—T3: Texas A&M Triads for Transformation—recently closed the first round and 100 innovative interdisciplinary projects were selected for funding. The fund will invest approximately $3 million annually in T3 projects. read more here…
Congratulations to three of our BiSSL graduate students, Varun Panyam, Tirth Dave, and Colton Brehm, for being awarded travel grants to present their first author conference papers at the 26th CIRP Life Cycle Engineering Conference on Advancing Industrial Sustainability, at Purdue University May 2019.
Congratulations to two of our BiSSL graduate research students Varuneswara Panyam and Colton Brehm, for winning the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Excellence Fellowship for continuing students for the Spring 2019 semester! The highly competitive graduate scholarship awards graduate students doing excellent research in the department.
“Winners of the 2016 Graedel Prizes: The Journal of Industrial Ecology Best Paper Prizes” by Helge Brattebø, Reid Lifset
The Graedel Prizes were established to honor Professor Thomas Graedel, now emeritus from Yale University after an outstanding successful career as a researcher and pioneer in the field of industrial ecology (IE). The prizes are awarded to the best two papers published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology (JIE) every year; one paper written by a junior single author or first author (below the age of 36) and one paper written by a senior single author or first author.
“The winning papers, as well as the ones that were nominated but were not selected, demonstrate research of high scientific quality and relevance on a wide spectrum of topics in the field of industrial ecology.”
full article on the 2016 prize awards here
The two prize‐winning papers successfully competed among 12 nominated papers, out of which four were written by a junior author or junior first author. The paper by Ivanova and colleagues (2016), the winner in the junior author category, with a study on household consumption, was in a close race with the paper by Layton and colleagues (2016) offering a study on data and organization of eco‐industrial parks (EIPs) and food webs (FWs).
The second best paper in the junior author category by Layton and colleagues (2016) is an excellent paper with original and novel contributions to research methods for more fundamental understanding of the characteristics of EIPs and FW mimicry. In particular, the study offers significant improvements in systematic analysis of metrics and data processing for a large data set of EIPs and FWs. The paper analyzes to what extent the IE metaphor is actually implemented in EIPs, and FW structures are compared with EIP structures. The paper concludes that EIPs are less complex that their ecological counterparts, and that EIPs still have a long way to go to meet the resilient and efficient properties of natural systems. This is a valuable contribution to IE research: It improves the scientific links between ecology methods and IE methods and offers a basis for better ecosystem mimicry in circular economy initiatives. The study represents great value for the IE community and increases our understanding of the extent our metaphor actually holds. It is also valuable in terms of the data provided and analysis made of the current EIP structures. The paper is well written with proper illustrations, an excellent structure, layout and language, and with extensive data and documentation including supporting information.
full article on the 2016 prize awards here
From Texas A&M Mechanical Engineering News:
In nature, networks have evolved where animals and plants interact and use efficient methods to best utilize resources. Dr. Astrid Layton, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, is researching whether companies can apply a similar concept of how this natural network looks and behaves in an effort to create more sustainable networks of industries. … read more
WFSC/ABS co-sponsored seminar with Dr. Fath. He will talk about his research in the area of systems ecology and network analysis applied to the sustainability and resilience of socio-ecological systems.
Abstract: Sustainability is a system-level property of the structure and function of the system in question. Key features of sustainable systems are energy and material resource flows and waste recovery and the presence and maintenance of autocatalytic cycles that build, dissipate, and regenerate resource gradients. A resilient system is one that is able to successfully navigate all stages of the adaptive cycle. This view focuses on sustaining life processes rather than piecemeal solutions to specific symptoms. In this study, network analysis is used to assess the impact of an invasive species on the food web in a series of Nebraska reservoirs. The introduction of the invasive species is mediated by a social network of anglers moving from place to place. Using this approach it is possible to promote management options to control the spread of the invasive species.
For more information on Dr. Fath please visit his website: https://www.towson.edu/fcsm/departments/biology/facultystaff/bfath.html
Wednesday, September 20th at 7 pm in MSC 2406
A panel discussion, moderated by Timothy M. Mulvaney from the School of Law and featuring panelist Dr. Wendy Jepson from the Department of Geography both at Texas A&M, covering the role of the US Constitution on climate change policy.
Description: The Constitution of the United States notes in the preamble a concern for promoting the general welfare of ourselves and our posterity. In a world where the health of the environment threatens not only our welfare, but the welfare of generations to come, environmental protection is of vital importance. The Commerce Clause also affirms the right of the government to pass environmental regulation, as it gives Congress the authority “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes.” This clause was used to pass many federal statutes, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. However, the question remains as to what kind of action is appropriate for both the environment and the economy. Do some statutes to protect the environment cause undue harm to the economy? Does the harm done to our environment have a greater economic impact than the statutes passed to protect it? How far can our government go, and how far should they go, to regulate industries’ impact on the environment? The event is free and open to the public.
BiSSL: Bio-inspired Systems Lab 