VTSuN member and green chemistry addict coffeemug got to attend the 17th ACS Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference at Maryland, thanks to a generous travel scholarship awarded by the National Science Foundation – I am … Continue reading →

Nanoethics – what is it? Adam Keiper described nanoethics as a “fledgling” discipline modeled on bioethics “to think through the societal, moral, and broader human implications of advances in nanotechnology”. In his article “Nanoethics as … Continue reading →

“Burning one hectare of grassland gives off more, and more damaging, pollutants than 6,000 cars. And we are burning in Africa, every single year, more than one billion hectares.”  - Allan Savory Imagine that. Climate change can cause (and exacerbate) desertification (Read this and this). Desertification severely affects the local … Continue reading →

Check out the recent Forbes interview with Dr. Paul Anastas, the Father of Green Chemistry. Dr. Paul Anastas  His thoughts on unintended consequences of science and technology provide some food for thought in the the context of nanotechnology: ”Unintended consequences seem to be a natural outcome of solely reductionist thinking—we need to … Continue reading →

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a well-established method to evaluate the environmental footprint of a product or process and has been widely used in several industries – packaging, pulp and paper, biofuels, food, dairy, fishery, textile (how about LCA of a pair of jeans?) – even to assess whether hand dryers … Continue reading →

  Dr. Peter Vikesland gave a TEDx symposium organized at Virginia Tech, on November 10, 2012. The theme for this TEDx event was ”Knowing”. Dr. Vikesland talked about how nanotechnology can help to address the grand challenges in the imminent global water scarcity. Dr. Vikesland is the Director of the VT-SuN IGEP and was among the twenty … Continue reading →

VT-SuN Hokies represented Virginia Tech at the first Sustainable Nanotechnology Conference (SNO), held at Arlington,  VA (November 4 – 6, 2012)   Andrea Tiwari presented a poster titled “Oxidation of C60 by Ozone”. She discussed her studies on the rapid oxidation of C60 by atmospherically relevant concentrations of ozone and … Continue reading →

“We are not students of some subject matter, but students of problems. And problems may cut right across the borders of any subject matter or discipline.” -Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge Today, we face many challenges in marshaling our limited and depleting resources to provide … Continue reading →