ASU has jumped up 8 spots in the rankings for U.S. patents granted to universities across the globe. After earning 62 patents in 2016 alone, ASU demonstrated its niche for innovation and climbed to 30th place in rankings by the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association.
ASU faculty researchers are developing pioneering technology, like engineer Tom Sugar's wearable robotics created to help humans with work and every day tasks.
"ASU’s jump in the patent rankings shows that the innovation occurring across the university is the direct outcome of our commitment to impact,” said Sethuraman Panchanathan, executive vice president and chief research and innovation officer of ASU's Knowledge Enterprise Development. “We will continue to advance use-inspired research that positively shapes and contributes to the communities around us. It is a mission that drives and inspires us.”
In addition to visiting the University of Johannesburg, they traveled to Kruger National Park and adjacent private reserves. This is the beginning of a promising partnership that aims to address the increasing rhino poaching epidemic. The proposed project will develop management plans that draw from the knowledge of a broad array of stakeholders at the local, national, and international levels.
Samson Szeto, communications program coordinator of ASU LightWorks, has been named to the 2017 GreenBiz "30 Under 30." The list honors young corporate sustainability professionals who strive to make an impact in their workplace and the world, and Szeto is doing just that.
Szeto, who graduated from ASU’s School of Sustainability in 2013, was nominated by his supervisor Travis Johnson, project and business development manager at LightWorks. He was recognized for his work on several renewable energy projects – including NEPTUNE – and his involvement with carbon capture technology.
The NEPTUNE project, a joint venture with the U.S. Navy and six other universities, trains veterans for careers in the energy sector. Szeto’s work with carbon capture technology involves creating strategic partnerships that unite corporations with ASU researchers working to halt climate change.
"Samson is passionate about driving innovation and sustainability into businesses and society," says Johnson. "I’m proud of him for being honored with the 30 Under 30 award, and I am sure he will continue changing the world."
“Today, at least 8 million tons of plastics leak into the ocean each year, which is equivalent to dumping the content of one garbage truck into the ocean per minute,” explained WBCSD via a release to its affiliates.
The ROW report serves as a call to action to businesses, emphasizing how marine debris prevention practices can benefit industries. The report was produced with the collaboration of various corporations, including The Dow Chemical Company, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation, Unilever, Nestlé, LafargeHolcim and Borealis.
WBCSD is one of the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) knowledge partners. CBO supported this project by participating in the ROW workshops leading up to the report and by providing expert reviews along the way.
The framework proposed in the article addresses the growing concerns of social abuses within the seafood sector. By engaging businesses, governments, and nonprofit organizations changes in policy and practice can ensure the sustainability of one of the largest food commodities.
After President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, School of Sustainability Assistant Professor Sonja Klinsky went over the possible ramifications with ASU Now.
Klinsky, who studies climate negotiations, said that the decision will hurt American business and devastate our country's international credibility.
"Already, there are long-standing tensions and questions about the American commitment to climate action," Klinsky explained. "Cumulatively, the U.S. is the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Breaking a promise by pulling out of this agreement or by removing domestic regulations will profoundly erode international trust in an arena in which collective action and cooperation is crucial."
Senior Sustainability Scientist Martin Pasqualetti was awarded the 2017 Place Research Award by the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) and the Project for Public Spaces.
The 2017 Place Research Award is one of four Great Places Awards given every year. The award recognizes work that applies an interdisciplinary research approach – integrating design, research and practice while focusing on the relationship between people and their environment.
A 2017 International Readers’ Poll by Algae Industry Magazine landed an ASU research team with the “Gold Medal” Award in the Laboratory Equipment Category.
Sustainability scientists Bruce Rittmann and Klaus Lackner led the team, aimed at assisting the U.S. Department of Energy in increasing renewable energy production. The result was ASU's Air Capture Technology that collects carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, scrubs it, and captures it for future use. This energy can be used to feed certain types of algae that can then be used as biofuels – both reducing emissions and providing affordable energy.
SESYNC Science Team Leads Effort to Increase Transparency in Endangered Species Recovery
By Kate Weiss, SESYNC
On May 5, 2017, a National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) science team led by Leah Gerber and Mike Runge presented a tool to Senior Administrators of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) that may help the agency prioritize endangered species recovery.
USFWS works to protect 1,275 threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, and each of these species requires an associated species recovery plan. These plans outline actions, recovery criteria, and other guidelines for species recovery. However, funding limits how many and which recovery plans each of the eight regions USFWS oversees may focus on.
Two years ago, Senior Sustainability Scientist Ariane Middel led a study on thermal comfort at ASU’s student union in Tempe. She and her team found that shade was the most important factor for comfort – more so than air temperature, humidity, and even clothing colors and materials.
Flash-forward to this year. Middel, an assistant research professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, has developed a tool that will someday show pedestrians the shadiest — and therefore coolest — route to their destinations. It will also tell planners and architects where they should create more shade.
The tool is a mobile weather station that resembles Pixar's WALL-E. Middel worked with a team of computer scientists to equip the weather station with the ability to take high-resolution Google Earth images. The 180-degree “fish-eye” views help to calculate whether a specific location would be in the sun or shade during a given time of day.
The STAR Community Rating System is a nonprofit organization that works to evaluate, improve, and certify sustainable communities. Several communities across the nation and in Arizona are STAR members, including SCN Steering Committee communities Chandler, Tucson, Phoenix, Avondale, Peoria, and Scottsdale. Membership benefits include access and tracking of sustainability metrics, as well as a dearth of other materials that can help to advance community sustainability.
STAR Affiliates are nonprofits, businesses, and institutions working with the organization to support and improve the STAR Community Rating System. STAR Affiliates are vital to efforts to help improve local communities. As a STAR Affiliate, the Sustainable Cities Network (SCN) can now help Arizona communities in securing resources to help collect data for STAR Leading Indicators, and we will be able to utilize STAR resources in order to aid communities in various efforts. View the STAR Affiliates page here.
As with the best exchanges of ideas in higher education, the bi-annual National Adaptation Forum of the adaptation minded left me with more questions than answers. Four days, 100 people and over 60 sessions held the potential to solve my adaptation conundrums and unveil fresh areas to investigate. Here are five of the most challenging and exciting ideas gleaned from the three-day forum:
Managed Retreat
Anne Siders – social scientist, lawyer building adaptive governance solutions for climate change and a Stanford University Ph.D. candidate – cited Federal Emergency Management Administration data showing that over the past 17 years, over 1,000 communities in 40 cities have experienced managed retreat. See here.
Now, in a general sense, MR is the deliberate setting back of the existing line of defense to obtain engineering and/or environmental advantages. More specifically, MR is the deliberate moving landward of the existing line of sea defense to obtain engineering or environmental advantages. It often refers to moving roads and utilities landward in the face of shore retreat.
So, the puzzler: Why are we not considering managed retreat for (to pick one of hundreds of communities that are candidates) Hollywood, Calif.?
Mental trauma and climate change
Joe Hostler, an Environmental Protection Specialist with the Yurok Tribe Environmental Program in Northwest California, revealed the multigenerational trauma among salmon fishers from the collapse of the Chinook and Coho salmon fisheries along the Klamath River. It promises misery for four fishing tribes along the river. Already a suicide crisis has emerged among young men bereft because they can’t provide for their families. This, of course, indicates that climate change, a contributor to the lack of salmon, can trigger mental health issues.
The puzzler: What preventive measures must our public health systems adopt to prevent further suicides and mental health-related challenges?
Public health and climate change
Related to the mental health challenge, climate change is impacting public health – whether it’s concern that tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue to, say, Europe or North America or the impact of vanishing salmon on the lives of fishing tribes. This piece offered by a representative of PDQ Public Health, explores how health-related adaptation messages can inspire action.
The puzzler: How can the adaptation field piggyback on the general acceptability of public health advancing adaptation principles?
Water Risks
Raj Rajan, Ph.D., Ecolab’s RD&E vice president and Global Sustainability technical leader, offered a way to monetize water risks. And Trucost, the London company that estimates the hidden costs of companies’ unsustainable use of natural resources, has worked with industry to derive it. See here.
The puzzler: If major financial market influencers such as Trucost (now a part of Standard & Poor’s) are embracing ways to put a dollar value on risks to water, how can we increase the uptake in measures beyond carbon reduction for, say, green bond evaluation?
Adaptation and Build
Designers have many ways to conceive of adaptation in buildings and three different ways were presented. They included architects Perkins+Will’s RELi, presented by Senior Associate and architect Doug Pierce; Arup engineering consultants’ Weathershift, presented by Associate Principal Cole Roberts, and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED resilience credits.
The puzzler: With these assets available, is it time to move to city ordinances to make resilient design required as standard?
I don’t intend to wait another two years for NAF 2019 to find answers to these questions. Thankfully, through experts in the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN), I have opportunities to work with practitioners and academics to create and encourage solutions.
The interactive artificial carbon capture tree, or #ArtTree, bridges the gap between science and art through a creative project that models a real-life technology. It was built as an artistic representation of Professor Klaus Lackner's carbon capture technology, which passively captures CO2 from the atmosphere 1,000 times more efficiently that trees.
The display has been featured at TEDxASU and Earth Day Texas (EDTx), allowing participants to simulate how carbon capture technology works. The #ArtTree is an excellent opportunity to educate attendees at events, not only about climate change issues but about a technology we’re developing here at ASU to solve climate change.
A recent study on fishing in Phoenix found that, of the anglers surveyed at six urban lakes, the majority reported eating recreationally-caught fishes even though they thought the water might be polluted.
Erin Pulford – a School of Sustainability graduate – is the lead author of the study, which was published in the Journal of Environmental Management. Based on Pulford's Master of Sustainability Solutions project with advisor Beth Polidoro, the study found varying levels of organic contaminants in surface water samples collected from the six urban lakes where anglers were surveyed.
The study bears particular significance to low-income and high-minority neighborhoods, where most of the city's recreational fisheries lakes and ponds are located. The results can be used to inform policies, improve water quality and support further research in order to reduce potential risks to public health.
Arizona State University researchers are working to enhance the public value outcomes of conservation science research. Leah Gerber, a professor in the School of Life Sciences, will work with Derrick Anderson, a faculty member in the School of Public Affairs, to study the ways in which researchers and organizations create public value knowledge outcomes from conservation science research.
This unlikely collaboration between an ecologist and a public management researcher is a result of ASU’s Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) and Center for Organization Research and Design (CORD) which were created in part to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration at the frontiers of biodiversity and organizational design research. As leaders of the two centers, Gerber and Anderson are now teaming up with a joint grant from the National Science Foundation’s Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) program.
We had a wonderful array of student projects this 2016-2017 academic year covering a vast landscape of topics. We decided to make a video montage to celebrate the solutions-oriented projects students worked on this year.
The Sustainable Cities Network and the School of Sustainability hosted its second Engaging with Cities Luncheon as part of the annual School of Sustainability Open House. At this event, students showcased their Spring 2017 semester research projects conducted for Arizona communities to a full house of municipal staff and ASU faculty and students. This year’s luncheon featured projects from three different School of Sustainability courses: SOS 582: Project Management for Sustainability, taught by Paul Prosser and Dr. Caroline Harrison; SOS 498/594: Sustainable Neighborhoods for Happiness, taught by Dr. Scott Cloutier; and SOS 321: Policy and Governance in Sustainable Systems, taught by Dr. Mike Schoon. Four student projects were highlighted in all.
The first project, presented by Masters of Sustainable Solutions students Whitney Love, Rachael Rosenstein, James Spearman, and James Sponsler for SOS 582, involved evaluating the St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance (SMFBA) recycling and solid waste program. The overall goal of the project was to create a comprehensive waste diversion implementation plan that increases the percentage of materials SMFBA sends to recycling facilities. The students proposed audits, educational tools, and infrastructure changes to increase diversion of SMFBA’s recyclable waste from the landfill.
The second project presentation by School of Sustainability Students Beth Ann Morrison, Erica Berejnoi Bejarano, and Rabekha Siebert for SOS 498/594, who discussed work in civic engagement and neighborhood revitalization in a City of Tempe neighborhood.
The third project was presented by ASU undergraduate students Mike Schwartz, Zachary Muncy, Alison Almand, Shizuki Goto, and Matt Burmeister for SOS 321 on Green Infrastructure. Specific GI features were highlighted for the City of Phoenix which included short- and long-term costs, maintenance requirements, and benefits/challenges helping the city alleviate the issue of stormwater runoff.
The fourth and final student group was presented by ASU undergraduate students Curt Klepper, Steve Latino, Olaya Reyes, Haley Daily, and Conrad Bavousett for SOS 321. This project focused on the challenges and solutions of increasing recycling at multi-family recycling units in an effort to increase the City of Scottsdale’s diversion of solid waste from apartments and condominium complexes by 30% by 2030.
“I was inspired by the UREx SRN Scenario Workshop we had in San Juan this past February 3rd to ruminate about the future of energy and food in Puerto Rico. I chose to take a decidedly qualitative approach to do so and have been working on a narrative for a future scenario.
I’ve tried to paint a picture of a resilient and adaptive Puerto Rico – I tried not to rely on any science fiction to create this future, and tried to keep it as plausible as possible. Set in the year 2080, the narrative describes a series of hypothetical (but possible) events, a set of proactive governance actions and policies, and citizen responses to those events and interventions. The narrative is based on expert-opinion and extrapolation of trends in energy markets, technology, and policy development, as well as recent events in Puerto Rico. It’s not necessarily what I think will happen, on the other hand I don’t believe that is it too utopian or naïve. A great number of details were left out. To be sure, the essay reflects my ideas and does not represent any official statements or views on the issue.”
ASU has jumped up 8 spots in the rankings for U.S. patents granted to universities across the globe. After earning 62 patents in 2016 alone, ASU demonstrated its niche for innovation and climbed to 30th place in rankings by the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association.
Samson Szeto, communications program coordinator of 
