̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Energy IRC

Emissions-free flying takes off at Cambridge Climate Challenge

plc32 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 09:11:42 +0000

A biology PhD candidate and an early career aerospace engineer researcher won the 2025 Cambridge Zero Climate Challenge for turning waste into sustainable jet fuel

“Elegant” algae solution wins Cambridge Zero student Climate Challenge

plc32 — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 16:02:58 +0000

Team AlgaeSorb’s winning pitch persuaded a panel of innovation experts to award them the top prize of £1500 for an idea, which judge Dr Nicky Dee, Founder of climate-focused venture capital group Carbon13, described as “elegant”.

“ ̽��ֱ��Climate Challenge was an incredible opportunity to not only meet like-minded students, but learn invaluable skills on crafting and designing impact-driven projects,” said Team AlgaeSorb’s Anish Chaluvadi, a Gates-Cambridge Scholar and Nanoscience and Nanotechnology PhD student at King’s College.

̽��ֱ��team also includes Nanoscience and Nanotechnology PhD student Timothy Lambden (Girton College) and Tristan Spreng, a Natural Sciences Masters’ student (Trinity College) and President of the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Energy Technology Society.

“ ̽��ֱ��Climate Challenge was one of the most exciting and well-organised events I got to attend during my four years at Cambridge," Spreng said. "From the breadth of speakers at the seminar sessions to exchanging ideas with other participants during the launch and final events, it was a truly amazing experience.”

Eight teams gathered in the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership’s (CISL) newly retro-fitted Entopia building to pitch ideas ranging from using machine learning to create algorithms for flood risk to crunching satellite data for locating wall-mounted solar panels.

̽��ֱ��judging panel also included serial entrepreneur Simon Hombersley, Professor Jaideep Prabhu, the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise at the Cambridge Judge Business School, Lindsay Hooper, Executive Director of CISL and Chris Gibbs from the ̽��ֱ��’s technology transfer unit Cambridge Enterprise.

Dr Dee said AlgaeSorb was a brilliant entry by a mixed team, which drew on different country experiences and expertise across chemistry, physics and materials sciences.

“As a result they developed an elegant solution to tackle methane in the Global South where other landfill solutions are not available and in a way that supports the local communities,” she said.

In between pitches, experts such as Professor Prabhu and Cambridge Zero Director Professor Emily Shuckburgh offered insights on sustainable innovation and its importance in the race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Dr Amy Munro-Faure, Cambridge Zero’s Head of Education and Student Engagement led a quick game that mixed teams for spontaneous pitches, which resulted in a wild melange of ideas that included saving dolphins and travelling through time.

̽��ֱ��eight-week Climate Challenge programme is run in partnership with CISL Canopy, Carbon13, Energy IRC, Cambridge Enterprise, the Maxwell Centre and sponsored by Moda Living. Competing teams undertake training and develop early-stage proposals for solutions to tackle climate challenges in innovative ways.

Each year there is a new theme. This year’s theme, “A Just Transition”, asked teams to consider the social impacts of their climate solutions.

Two runner-up teams were awarded a prize of £750. FireSight, formed of Jovana Knezevic and Onkar Gulati, pitched a risk assessment and consulting service to address global wildfires using remote sensing and machine learning. Carolina Pulignani and Shannon A. Bonke of Wastevalor fascinated the judges with their technology that converts waste into methanol.

Team Reckon, made up of Aparna Holenarasipura Sreedhara and Akanksha Sahay, won the Audience Choice Award for their software as a service platform entry. ̽��ֱ��software gives organisations the ability to measure the social impact of their climate transition plans.

Judges said the Climate Challenge was a powerful demonstration of how innovation and the determination to tackle climate change permeate every level of the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� community.

“Helping build the entrepreneurial mindset in the ̽��ֱ�� ecosystem is critical to the innovation agenda and particularly crucial for a true net zero where over half the innovations needed for 2050 are still in the lab,” Gibbs said.

A team of student entrepreneurs who see algae as a potential business solution for reducing methane emissions from landfill and waste-water sites won the 2023 Cambridge Zero Climate Challenge after a nail-biting competition.

̽��ֱ��climate challenge was one of the most exciting and well-organised events I got to attend during my four years at Cambridge

Tristan Spreng

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge at the World Economic Forum 2016

cjb250 — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 10:56:46 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� will host an IdeasLab looking at how breakthroughs in carbon reduction technologies will transform industries. IdeasLabs are quick-fire visual presentations followed by workgroup discussion, and have proved a successful format for engaging various communities in academic thinking.

Carbon Reduction Technologies: ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge IdeasLab

Wednesday 20 January 16:15 - 17:30

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor, will introduce this event, which will look at how research by Cambridge academics has led to breakthroughs in carbon reduction technologies that will transform a range of industries. Ideas to be discussed include:

Decarbonizing industrial-scale processes using virtual avatars
Self-healing concrete for low-carbon infrastructure
Improving solar materials efficiency using quantum mechanics
Quantum materials for zero-loss transmission of electricity

̽��ֱ��event is supported Energy@Cambridge, a Strategic Research Initiative that brings together the activities of over 250 world-leading academics working in all aspects of energy-related research, covering energy supply, conversion and demand, across a wide range from departments.

̽��ֱ��speakers, all members of the Strategic Research Initiative, are:

Professor Abir Al-Tabbaa, Department of Engineering

Professor Al-Tabbaa is a Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment. She leads international work on sustainable and innovative materials for construction and the environment. Her particular expertise relates to low-carbon and self-healing construction materials, ground improvement, soil mix technology and contaminated land remediation.

Professor Sir Richard Friend, Department of Physics

Professor Friend is the Director of the Maxwell Centre and the Winton Fund for the Physics of Sustainability. He is the lead academic on one of Energy@Cambridge’s Grand Challenges – Materials for Energy Efficient Information Communications Technology.

Professor Friend’s research encompasses the physics, materials science and engineering of semiconductor devices made with carbon-based semiconductors, particularly polymers. His research group was first to demonstrate using polymers efficient operation of field-effect transistors and light-emitting diodes. These advances revealed that the semiconductor properties of this broad class of materials are unexpectedly clean, so that semiconductor devices can both reveal their novel semiconductor physics, including their operation in efficient photovoltaic diodes, optically-pumped lasing, directly-printed polymer transistor circuits and light-emitting transistors.

Professor Markus Kraft, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology

Professor Kraft is the director of the Singapore-Cambridge CREATE Research Centre and a principal investigator of the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Reduction in Chemical Technology (C4T), one of the Grand Challenges. C4T is a world-leading partnership between Cambridge and Singapore, set up to tackle the environmentally relevant and complex problem of assessing and reducing the carbon footprint of the integrated petro-chemical plants and electrical network on Jurong Island in Singapore.

Professor Kraft has contributed to the detailed modelling of combustion synthesis of organic and inorganic nanoparticles. He has worked on fluidization, spray drying and granulation of fine powders. His interested include computational modelling and optimization targeted towards developing carbon abatement and emissions reduction technologies.

Dr Suchitra Sebastian, Department of Physics

Dr Sebastian creates and studies interesting quantum materials - often under extreme conditions such as very high magnetic and electric fields, enormous pressures, and very low temperatures - with a view to discovering unusual phases of matter. Among these are the family of superconductors - which have the exciting property of transporting electricity with no energy loss - and hence hold great promise for energy saving applications. One of her research programmes is to create a new generation of superconductors that operate at accessible temperatures, thus providing energy transmission and storage solutions of the future.

Will Science Save Us?

Friday 22 January

̽��ֱ��Vice Chancellor and Dr Suchitra Sebastian will take part in a lunchtime discussion entitled Will Science Save Us?, which will look at how we accelerate scientific breakthroughs that address society's greatest challenges.

* * *

̽��ֱ��World Economic Forum is an independent international organisation engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas; this year’s theme is ̽��ֱ��Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business.

̽��ֱ��Forum will provide an opportunity for the Cambridge researchers to engage with decision-makers in business, NGOs and in public policy, and to highlight new ideas from Cambridge in responding to global challenges.

For further information or to contact any of the speakers, please contact the team at Energy@Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��Vice Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is to lead a delegation of academics to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in January 2016, to explore issues including carbon reduction technologies and how science and engineering can best address society's greatest challenges.

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Coal Fired Power Station (cropped)

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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New research aims to improve energy efficiency, cut carbon emissions and reduce costs

pbh25 — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 08:34:00 +0000

Against a world backdrop of increased concerns about energy security, price fluctuations and, of course, the need to address climate change, six new research projects that aim to gain a fuller understanding of how energy is managed in the country’s non-domestic buildings are launched today.

Funded with £3 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), on behalf of the Research Councils UK Energy Programme (RCUKEP), the research will address how to use technology, data and information, mathematics, law and sociology to create better energy strategies and behaviours in the public and private, non-domestic buildings stock.

Among the schemes being funded is a Cambridge project aimed at creating software which will help to reduce the uncertainty in modelling the energy management of a wide variety of buildings.

Non-domestic buildings such as offices, supermarkets, hospitals and factories account for approximately 18 per cent of UK carbon emissions and 13 per cent of final energy consumption.

By 2050, the total UK’s non-domestic floor area is expected to increase by 35 per cent, while 60 per cent of existing buildings will still be in use. This means that substantial retro-fitting is likely and planning what techniques to use to save energy, as well as how to implement change with the cooperation of building occupants, is going to be essential.

Professor Philip Nelson EPSRC’s Chief Executive said: “Improving energy efficiency is an important piece of the energy puzzle. Worldwide energy demand is rising, as are global temperatures and sea levels. We need to find smart solutions to how we use energy while improving the environment in which people have to work, rest or play. These projects will go a long way to help improve our understanding of what goes on in non-domestic buildings and add to the armoury at the disposal of those managing these facilities.”

̽��ֱ��new projects will be run at Imperial College London, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh, ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford, ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton and the ̽��ֱ�� of Strathclyde.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge project is called B-bem: ̽��ֱ��Bayesian building energy management Portal. ̽��ֱ��research team is led by Ruchi Choudhary (Department of Engineering) and includes Sebastian Macmillan (IDBE), Koen Steemers and Yeonsook Heo (Department of Architecture), and Michael Pollitt (Cambridge Judge Business School).

Cambridge project is among those benefiting from £3 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding.

Improving energy efficiency is an important piece of the energy puzzle.

Professor Philip Nelson EPSRC’s Chief Executive

Phil Guest

Overlooking the Thames

More information:

̽��ֱ��Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and physical sciences. EPSRC invests around £800m a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. ̽��ֱ��areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. ̽��ֱ��Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK.
̽��ֱ��Research Councils UK (RCUK) Energy Programme led by EPSRC aims to position the UK to meet its energy and environmental targets and policy goals through world-class research and training. ̽��ֱ��Energy programme is investing more than £625 million in research and skills to pioneer a low carbon future. This builds on an investment of £839 million over the past eight years. ̽��ֱ��Energy Programme brings together the work of EPSRC and that of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

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