Morgan Kelly, High Meadows Environmental Institute
Feb. 3, 2021 4:59 p.m.
Scientists and research based at Princeton University played a critical role in a new national report that investigates the technology, policy and societal dimensions of accelerating decarbonization in the United States.
On Feb. 2, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published the interactive report, “Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy System,” which provides a technical blueprint and policy manual for the first decade of a wholesale transformation of the American economy to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Princeton scientists and research played a critical role in a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that investigates the technology, policy and societal dimensions of accelerating decarbonization in the United States.
A new view of biology
January 26, 2021Princeton
Cliff Brangwynne was seeing cells in the sidewalk again.
It was another long day in the lab at Harvard Medical School, where Brangwynne would often work late nights, staring at cells. Sometimes he spent so much time staring at cells through the microscope that the cells would follow him home, their shapes imprinted on his vision. Walking late at night, he’d see them dancing over the buildings and the empty streets and sidewalks.
Though Brangwynne was in his college years, he wasn’t a student in fact, some would call him a dropout. He’d been enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University, a first-generation college student, when a mixture of burnout and wanderlust prompted him to take a year off midway through his degree. At first he thought he would take a yearlong trip to Latin America. But he was interested in materials science he liked how it described the world in terms of math and physics. He also loved biology: he loved
Cliff Brangwynne upends tradition to establish a new view of biology
Jerimiah Oetting, for the Office of the Dean for Research
Jan. 25, 2021 9 a.m.
Clifford Brangwynne, the June K. Wu ’92 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and inaugural director of the Princeton Bioengineering Initiative, sees similarities between living cells and salad dressing, in which oil and vinegar separate according to the laws of physics. The idea has caught on, and now many scientists are exploring how such physical processes can drive the formation of the cell’s structures and play key roles in cellular division and gene expression.
Photo by
01/11/2021 - Anyone concerned about our future climate will soon be able to contribute to understanding the social dynamics of climate change by taking part in a “citizen science” experiment. In a donation-funded online simulation currently being developed by the non-profit company SCIARA in cooperation with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), users can playfully explore virtual climate futures, make decisions, and see the consequences. Based on the players behavior, decision-makers in politics, business and society will ultimately be able to check climate protection measures for their social acceptance and effectiveness before they are implemented - in order to make effective decisions in the long term.
December 23, 2020
More on the recent Princeton study looking at pathways to zero carbon by mid-century.
Now a mountainous body of scholarship and real life experience indicating we can do this, but time is short.
If the United States wants to get serious about tackling climate change, the country will need to build a staggering amount of new energy infrastructure in just the next 10 years, laying down steel and concrete at a pace barely being contemplated today.
That’s one conclusion from a major study released Tuesday by a team of energy experts at Princeton University, who set out several exhaustively detailed scenarios for how the country could slash its greenhouse gas emissions down to zero by 2050. That goal has been endorsed by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., as well as numerous states and businesses, to help avoid the worst effects of global warming.