(6b) Responsible Environment and Energy Engineering; Systems, Complexity, Sustainability

Catastrophic challenges, such as water scarcity and energy availability, compounded with growing environmental pollution concerns requires continued innovation among science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics, and leadership fields.  Novel complex sensors incorporating meso-, nano-, and bio-materials have the potential to reduce energy used to produce fuels-chemicals, can be applied to address water quality issues that compromise environment and human health, and can be extended to fields such as health care.  For example, by identifying critical components of a complex biosensing system, emergent properties have been identified that were used to direct improvements that result in overall more efficient design (Jensen and Müeller 2015) and commercialization.  Further, by working with model environmental systems, biometabolic complexity can be unraveled when developing specific analytical chemistry techniques that also make use of natural methods to improve water quality (Jensen and Gujarathi 2015).  In both situations, theory and experiment are required to validate outputs, require complex signal interpretation, and provide for fundamental skills that are applicable to energy-environment problems, and fields (e.g. biomedical) that can make use of related transferable skills to meet the challenges of the future.

This poster will demonstrate:

1)     The vision for my innovative energy and environmental research group,

2)     provide insight into publications that demonstrate biosensor applications (Jensen and Müeller 2015) and low energy, natural, water treatment systems (Jensen and Gujarathi 2015),

3)     and highlight professional service with examples of outreach combined with teaching in multi-year, collaborative, and hands-on laboratory approaches (Jensen 2015).

Jensen, CD. “Graduate Student Action Research to Help Fill Gaps for Formal Engineering Education for Sustainable Development Program Formation: Vignettes As Action.” Paper #112. Nesbit, S. & Froese, T. M. (Eds.) (2015). Proceedings of EESD15: The 7th Conference on Engineering Education for Sustainable Development, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. June 9-12.

Jensen CD, Gujarathi N. “Characterization of a Macrophyte Microcosm as a Surface Water Treatment System for Antibiotics.” Environmental Progress and Sustainable Energy, 2015. DOI 10.1002/ep.12158.

Jensen CD, Müeller C.  “Benchmark Characteristics of pH based Optoelectronic Enzymatic Biosensors with Non-modified E. coli BL21 pGELAF+.” Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology, 2015, DOI 10.1007/s12010-015-1623-1.