3D-printed ‘living material’ could clean up contaminated water

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

 

VIDEO: A "LIVING MATERIAL," MADE OF A NATURAL POLYMER COMBINED WITH GENETICALLY ENGINEERED BACTERIA, COULD OFFER A SUSTAINABLE AND ECO-FRIENDLY SOLUTION TO CLEAN POLLUTANTS FROM WATER. view more 

CREDIT: UC SAN DIEGO JACOBS SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new type of material that could offer a sustainable and eco-friendly solution to clean pollutants from water.

Dubbed an “engineered living material,” it is a 3D-printed structure made of a seaweed-based polymer combined with bacteria that have been genetically engineered to produce an enzyme that transforms various organic pollutants into benign molecules. The bacteria were also engineered to self-destruct in the presence of a molecule called theophylline, which is often found in tea and chocolate. This offers a way to eliminate them after they have done their job.

The researchers describe the new decontaminating material in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

“What’s innovative is the pairing of a polymer material with a biological system to create a living material that can function and respond to stimuli in ways that regular synthetic materials cannot,” said Jon Pokorski, a professor of nanoengineering at UC San Diego who co-led the research.

The work was a collaboration among engineers, materials scientists and biologists at the UC San Diego Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). Co-principal investigators of the multidisciplinary team include molecular biology professors Susan Golden and James Golden and nanoengineering professor Shaochen Chen.

“This collaboration allowed us to apply our knowledge of the genetics and physiology of cyanobacteria to create a living material,” said Susan Golden, a faculty member in the School of Biological Sciences. “Now we can think creatively about engineering novel functions into cyanobacteria to make more useful products.”

To create the living material in this study, the researchers used alginate, a natural polymer derived from seaweed, hydrated it to make a gel and mixed it with a type of water-dwelling, photosynthetic bacteria known as cyanobacteria.

The mixture was fed into a 3D printer. After testing various 3D-printed geometries for their material, the researchers found that a grid-like structure was optimal for keeping the bacteria alive. The chosen shape has a high surface area to volume ratio, which places most of the cyanobacteria near the material’s surface to access nutrients, gases and light.

The increased surface area also makes the material more effective at decontamination.

As a proof-of-concept experiment, the researchers genetically engineered the cyanobacteria in their material to continually produce a decontaminating enzyme called laccase. Studies have shown that laccase can be used to neutralize a variety of organic pollutants including bisphenol A (BPA), antibiotics, pharmaceutical drugs and dyes. In this study, the researchers demonstrated that their material can be used to decontaminate the dye-based pollutant indigo carmine, which is a blue dye that is widely used in the textile industry to color denim. In tests, the material decolorized a water solution containing the dye.

The researchers also developed a way to eliminate the cyanobacteria after the pollutants have been cleared. They genetically engineered the bacteria to respond to a molecule called theophylline. The molecule triggers the bacteria to produce a protein that destroys their cells.

“The living material can act on the pollutant of interest, then a small molecule can be added afterwards to kill the bacteria,” said Pokorski. “This way, we can alleviate any concerns about having genetically modified bacteria lingering in the environment.”

A preferable solution, the researchers note, is to have the bacteria destroy themselves without the addition of chemicals. This will be one of the future directions of this research.

“Our goal is to make materials that respond to stimuli that are already present in the environment,” said Pokorski.

“We’re excited about the possibilities that this work can lead to, the exciting new materials we can create. This is the kind of research that can result when researchers with cross-disciplinary expertise in materials and biological sciences join forces. This is all made possible thanks to our interdisciplinary research group at the UC San Diego MRSEC.”

Paper title: “Phenotypically Complex Living Materials Containing Engineered Cyanobacteria.” Co-authors include Debika Datta*, Elliot L. Weiss*, Daniel Wangpraseurt, Erica Hild, Shaochen Chen, James W. Golden, Susan S. Golden and Jonathan K. Pokorski, all at UC San Diego.

*These authors contributed equally to this work.

This work was supported in part by the UC San Diego Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (UC San Diego MRSEC) and the National Science Foundation (DMR-2011924).

UC San Diego researchers have developed a "living material," made of a natural polymer combined with genetically engineered bacteria, that could offer a sustainable and eco-friendly solution to clean pollutants from water.

CREDIT

David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-023-40265-2 

ARTICLE TITLE

Phenotypically complex living materials containing engineered cyanobacteria

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Aug-2023

Will it slip or will it grip: scientists ask, “what is snail mucus?”

A new study breaks down the complex structure of snail mucus and identifies novel proteins

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ADVANCED SCIENCE RESEARCH CENTER, GC/CUNY

 

IMAGE: A DENDROGRAM (TREE) SHOWING THE GENETIC SIMILARITY BETWEEN 71 PROTEINS AGAINST ~180 RELATED PROTEINS THAT WERE FOUND PREVIOUSLY IN OTHER MOLLUSKS. THE RESULTS CONFIRM THAT EVEN WHEN COMPARED AGAINST HUNDREDS OF OTHER PROTEINS SIMULTANEOUSLY, SIMILAR PROTEINS STILL CLUSTER TOGETHER. THE BLACK BRACKET ON THE RIGHT SIGNIFIES THE “OUTGROUP,” A GROUP OF PROTEINS THAT IS INTENTIONALLY UNRELATED FROM THE REST. view more 

CREDIT: ANTONIO CERULLO

NEW YORK, September 5, 2023 — What is snail mucus? That was the question posed by researchers in a new study that examines the molecular composition of snail mucus. When analyzing the mucus of a common garden snail, they found it contained a complex collection of proteins, some identified as entirely novel.

In a newly published paper in Nature Communications, scientists profile the mucus of Cornu aspersum — a species used in beauty product formulation and eaten as escargot — and detail the composition of three unique types of secretions — one that hydrates and protects its skin, another that works as a glue-like adhesive, and another that lubricates to allow the animal to move freely across surfaces.

“We were surprised that the mucus compositions were quite different, despite being produced by the same species,” said lead author Antonio Cerullo, a biochemistry Ph.D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center. “Even more so, the adhesive snail glue and the lubricious snail trail, which have completely opposite purposes, come from the same part of the snail. It was exciting to discover that very subtle differences in mucus compositions have huge impacts on their biological and material properties.”

The researchers say the hydrogels contain ions, sugars, and more than 70 proteins, including enzymes, mucins, lectins, and matrix proteins. About one-third of the proteins found in the mucus shared no similarity with any proteins in the global databases that were searched, said the researchers. In short, the secretions contain many proteins that are unlike any others known to science.

Snail mucus is widely used in cosmetics, moisturizers, anti-aging creams, wound care treatments, and antimicrobials. Beauty products containing snail mucus are a multi-billion-dollar global industry.

There are still many open questions about the macromolecular structure of mucus. Even human mucus, which has been studied much more extensively than snail mucus, is not well understood.

“Everyone is fascinated and disgusted by mucus. However, most people don’t realize just how complex and elegant these secretions are,” said the study’s principal investigator Adam Braunschweig, who is a faculty member with the Nanoscience Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the Graduate Center and Hunter College.

The data revealed subtle differences that accounted for vast differences in properties of the mucus. One example involves the use of calcium.=

Calcium holds mucus networks together and solidifies the network. As a result, lubricating mucus has the least amount of calcium and the highest amount of calcium-binding proteins, while binding mucus has the opposite composition.

Snail mucus is currently being studied for applications in biomedicine, including surgical glues, as lubricants for eyes, joints, and medical implants, as well as drug delivery systems. More uses of snail mucus are being discovered every day, Braunschweig said.

Xi Chen, a CUNY ASRC researcher and professor at The City College of New York and the Graduate Center and Mandë Holford, a chemistry professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College were collaborators on the study.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the U.S. Space Force. Collaborators were supported by the Office of Naval Research, the Allen Institute, and the National Institutes of Health.

 

About the Graduate Center of The City University of New York
The CUNY Graduate Center is a leader in public graduate education devoted to enhancing the public good through pioneering research, serious learning, and reasoned debate. The Graduate Center offers ambitious students nearly 50 doctoral and master’s programs of the highest caliber, taught by top faculty from throughout CUNY — the nation’s largest urban public university. Through its nearly 40 centers, institutes, initiatives, and the Advanced Science Research Center, the Graduate Center influences public policy and discourse and shapes innovation. The Graduate Center’s extensive public programs make it a home for culture and conversation.

About the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center
The Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) is a world-leading center of scientific excellence that elevates STEM inquiry and education at CUNY and beyond. The CUNY ASRC’s research initiatives span five distinctive, but broadly interconnected disciplines: nanoscience, photonics, neuroscience, structural biology, and environmental sciences. The center promotes a collaborative, interdisciplinary research culture where renowned and emerging scientists advance their discoveries using state-of-the-art equipment and cutting-edge core facilities.

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-023-41094-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Comparative mucomic analysis of three functionally distinct Cornu aspersum Secretions

UK

Study reveals disparities within NHS leadership

Peer-Reviewed Publication

STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY

New research shows that Allied Health Professions (AHPs) are significantly underrepresented in senior leadership roles despite being the third largest workforce in the NHS.

Ranging from paramedics to podiatrists, the AHPs encompass various healthcare disciplines, constituting a workforce of 185,000 within the NHS.

However AHPs have historically been underrepresented in strategic leadership positions, often occupied by medical professionals. To address this, NHS England advocated for the establishment of a Chief AHP role in every Trust to harness the untapped potential of this workforce and increase diversity in leadership roles.

A recent study from Staffordshire University published in BMJ Leader provides comprehensive data on the current state of AHP strategic leadership within the NHS.

Gathering responses from 160 out of 217 Trusts and Health Boards, the study reveals that 81% of the surveyed organisations now employ a Chief AHP or equivalent. However, only 14% of these roles have a presence on the executive board of their respective Trusts or Health Boards.

The report identifies 50 diverse job titles associated with Chief AHP roles, with "Director of AHPs" (18.6%), "Lead AHP" (13.9%), and "Chief AHP" (11.6%) being the most frequently reported titles.

The findings also highlight a concerning disparity in the representation of AHP professions within senior AHP leadership, with a significant majority (70%) of these roles held by physiotherapists and occupational therapists.

Senior author Professor Nachi Chockalingam, Director of the Centre for Biomechanics and Rehabilitation Technologies, explained: "This study exposing discrepancies in AHP profession representation, the lack of standardised titles for Chief AHPs, and a significant scarcity of Chief AHPs on executive boards.

“The absence of AHP leaders in key strategic positions poses challenges, hampering the development of AHPs' leadership skills and impeding access to mentors and role models.”

He added: “The inclusion of AHP leaders in planning has been proven to positively impact patient outcomes, whereas their absence can lead to missed opportunities for patients to benefit from essential AHP services.”

While medical and nursing directors are required on NHS Trust executive boards in England, no comparable obligation exists for AHP representation. In contrast, Wales mandates the inclusion of a therapies and health sciences officer on boards.

The report highlights a necessity for a standardised titles for the head of AHPs. The need to mandate the presence of chief AHPs on NHS executive boards, aligning with nursing and medical roles, is also emphasised. Furthermore, identifying barriers to diverse AHP representation and promoting broader inclusion in chief AHP positions are key actions for advancing AHP leadership.

Read the full study Exploration of the representation of the allied health professions in senior leadership positions in the UK National Health Service published in BMJ Leader.

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JOURNAL

BMJ Leader

DOI

10.1136/leader-2023-000737 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Exploration of the representation of the allied health professions in senior leadership positions in the UK National Health Service

 

Active children are more resilient

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BASEL

 

IMAGE: ONE OF THE PARTICIPATING CHILDREN DURING THE STRESS TEST AT THE LAB. (PHOTO: UNIVERSITY OF BASEL, MARIA PATZSCHKE) view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF BASEL, MARIA PATZSCHKE

The school year has hardly begun and the first exams are already approaching. According to findings by researchers from the University of Basel, school children cope better with the stress if they get plenty of daily exercise.

“Get some exercise!” It’s one suggestion adults frequently hear when they complain about stress in their lives. Exercise helps relieve stress. But does this also apply to children? Does exercise help them manage the pressures to achieve at school? A research team led by Dr. Manuel Hanke and Dr. Sebastian Ludyga from the Department of Sport, Exercise and Health recently examined the effect of physical activity on children’s stress levels. Their findings appear in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport.

For their study, they had 110 children between the ages of 10 and 13 wear a sensor tracking their daily movement over the course of a week. They then brought the participants into the lab on two separate occasions to complete a stressful task and a non-stressful control task (see the box). The researchers tested the children’s physical stress reaction via the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva.

Less cortisol in active children

“We wanted to determine whether physical activity makes children more resilient under laboratory-controlled circumstances,” explains project director Sebastian Ludyga. The results showed that the participants who got more than an hour of exercise per day, as the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends, did in fact produce less cortisol in the stress task than the children who were less active.

“Regularly active children seem to have a reduced physiological stress reaction in general,” notes Manuel Hanke, lead author of the study. Even in the control task, which involved an unfamiliar situation, making it still somewhat unsettling for the participants, there was a difference in cortisol levels between more and less active children – though overall cortisol levels were lower than in the stress task.

Stress hormone levels increase during exercise

One possible explanation for this finding could be that cortisol levels also increase during exercise, says Sebastian Ludyga. “When children regularly run, swim, climb, etc., the brain learns to associate a rise in cortisol with something positive. The body’s reaction always has a cognitive component as well: this positive association helps to prevent the concentration of cortisol from rising to too high a level in exam situations as well.”

Besides their analysis of the saliva samples, the researchers also examined cognitive reactions to the stress task by recording participants’ brainwaves via electroencephalogram (EEG). The team plans to analyze these data next. “Stress can interfere with thinking. Some of us are familiar with this in its most extreme form – a blackout,” Hanke explains. The team now aims to determine whether physical activity also has an influence on these cognitive effects of stress.

 

Box: Methodology

For their study, the researchers used the Trier Social Stress Test for Children: the participants had to read a story with an open ending, then had five minutes to prepare before using their notes to tell the rest of the story for a jury. What they didn’t know in advance was that the preparation time was intentionally kept so short so that it would not be sufficient. After about a minute, their notes were mostly exhausted but they still had to fill five minutes and think something up on the spur of the moment. This task was followed by a seemingly simple arithmetic task in which participants were asked to repeatedly reduce a number in the high three digits by a certain value over the course of five minutes.  The stress in this task is primarily caused by errors, which require the participant to restart the task from the beginning. In the control task, which was conducted on a separate occasion, the children also had to read a story, but they then discussed general questions about the story with a researcher without any pressure to perform. In both sessions, the researchers took saliva samples at regular intervals before and after the tasks in order to measure cortisol levels.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport

DOI

10.1016/j.jsams.2023.07.010 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and reactivity to acute psychosocial stress in preadolescent children

 

Scientists decipher the fingertip’s ‘memory’

A study has demonstrated that tactile neurons transmit information about previous forces experienced by the fingertip, potentially aiding the brain in navigating daily manual tasks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ELIFE

Scientists have detailed how the activity of tactile neurons in the fingertip in response to an applied force is influenced by the fingertip's mechanical memory of previous forces.

The study, published today as an eLife Reviewed Preprint, provides what the editors call fundamental findings on how the fingertip’s viscoelasticity – its time-dependent mechanical response to an applied force – affects the information relayed by tactile neurons to the brain. The findings emphasise that these neurons not only signal current fingertip force but also the fingertip’s viscoelastic memory of previous loadings. Tactile information about the recent physical state of the skin may help the brain to formulate accurate motor commands to control the hands in object manipulation and haptic tasks.

Everyday tasks we complete with our hands, such as cooking, cleaning, or grasping and transporting objects, require precise and rapidly recurring application of forces to external objects. To effectively accomplish  these tasks, the brain relies on information about the forces acting on the fingertips provided by tactile neurons. However, these neurons do not directly signal contact forces; rather, they relay information about the deformations made to the skin by the applied force.

“The viscoelasticity of the human fingertip means that any deformation caused by a force acting on the fingertip lasts longer than the force itself,” explains lead author Hannes Saal, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK. “Therefore, residual deformations from previous forces will affect how the fingertip reacts mechanically when subjected to a new force. However, the extent to which this physical memory influences the signalling of tactile neurons during natural hand use is not well understood.”

To investigate this, Saal and colleagues examined how previous fingertip forces affected the responses of first-order tactile neurons when new forces were applied. They used a custom-built robot to stimulate the fingertip with forces that mimicked those typically encountered during natural object interaction. They recorded impulse responses of nearly 200 individual neurons using specially designed electrodes inserted into peripheral nerves of human volunteers. The neurons were categorised as fast-adapting type 1 (FA-1), slowly-adapting type 1 (SA-1), and slowly-adapting type 2 (SA-2). 

Forces were applied in different directions to the fingertip in rapid succession. By comparing fingertip deformation and elicited neural responses in stimulation sequences where the directional order of the stimuli was kept constant with sequences where the order was systematically varied, the team analysed effects of the previous force stimulus on the responses of the subsequent one.

First, they noted that varying the loading history resulted in greater variation in fingertip deformation, confirming the viscoelastic memory of the fingertip. Then, they examined whether this increased variability in deformation was mirrored in the responses of the neurons. They found that firing rates during the force applications showed roughly twofold greater variability in FA-1 and SA-1 neurons, and around 70% more variability in SA-2 neurons, when the directional order was varied compared to fixed. This indicated that the fingertip’s viscoelastic memory influenced the responses in the tactile neuron. The difference in effect size between neuron types could stem from type 1 neurons primarily sensing mechanical events in the superficial structures of the skin, while type 2 neurons primarily sense tension states in deeper tissues.

Next, the team investigated whether the increased neuronal response variability could be linked to the fingertip’s viscoelastic memory. To this end, they quantified the information relayed to the brain about the direction of the force, both the current and the previous one. They found that information about the current force direction decreased when the preceding stimulus was systematically varied as compared to when it was consistent. Intriguingly, they also observed considerable diversity in the behaviour of individual neurons within each type: while some neurons primarily signalled information about the current force direction, others signalled both the current and previous direction, and some primarily the preceding direction. Moreover, they discovered that SA-2 neurons, many of which are active even without external stimulation, could signal information about the fingertip’s viscoelastic deformation state even between fingertip loadings. 

This diversity of responses suggests that, collectively, first-order tactile neurons relay rich information about the fingertip’s viscoelastic state to the brain, containing within them a memory of past stimulation. Co-author Ingvars Birznieks, Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales Sydney, states: “I am very compelled by the idea that one of the functions of SA-2 neurons might be to signal the overall viscoelastic state of the fingertip, which might enable more accurate interpretation of type-1 neuron input.”

The authors note that there has been no systematic investigation into whether effects of viscoelasticity on tactile sensing impact the performance of manual tasks, so it remains unclear whether viscoelasticity might limit performance, or if the neural information about past stimuli is used by the brain in some capacity. Additionally, as proposed in the eLife public review, the study could gain from a more direct examination of the link between skin deformation and neuron firing, a facet that the authors are currently addressing.

“Our findings suggest that populations of tactile neurons provide a continuous stream of information to the brain about the viscoelastic deformation state of the fingertip,” concludes senior author Roland Johansson, Professor in the Department of Integrative and Medical Biology, Umeå University, Sweden. “It is plausible that the brain employs this information to estimate the fingertip's state during the planning and evaluation of tactile-based actions. Investigating this idea in future research holds intriguing potential.”

 

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Media contacts

Emily Packer, Media Relations Manager

eLife

e.packer@elifesciences.org

+44 (0)1223 855373

George Litchfield, Marketing and PR Assistant

eLife

g.litchfield@elifesciences.org

 

About eLife

eLife transforms research communication to create a future where a diverse, global community of scientists and researchers produces open and trusted results for the benefit of all. Independent, not-for-profit and supported by funders, we improve the way science is practised and shared. In support of our goal, we’ve launched a new publishing model that ends the accept/reject decision after peer review. Instead, papers invited for review will be published as a Reviewed Preprint that contains public peer reviews and an eLife assessment. We also continue to publish research that was accepted after peer review as part of our traditional process. eLife receives financial support and strategic guidance from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Max Planck Society and Wellcome. Learn more at https://elifesciences.org/about.

To read the latest Neuroscience research in eLife, visit https://elifesciences.org/subjects/neuroscience.

 

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JOURNAL

eLife

DOI

10.7554/eLife.89616.1 

ARTICLE TITLE

Memory at your fingertips: how viscoelasticity affects tactile neuron signaling

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Sep-2023

 Professor helping young engineers respond to world’s biggest challenges receives ‘Distinguished Woman in Engineering’ award

A University of Warwick professor who is helping young engineers across the world respond to humanity’s biggest challenges, has won the ‘Distinguished Woman in Engineering’ award

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

 

IMAGE: PROF GEORGIA KREMMYDA view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

A University of Warwick professor who is helping young engineers across the world respond to humanity’s biggest challenges, has won the ‘Distinguished Woman in Engineering’ award.

Hosted by the ‘International Network of Women Engineers and Scientists’ (INWES), the award celebrates Professor Georgia Kremmyda’s achievements in global capacity building (developing and building knowledge and skills internationally) and commitments to the representation of women in STEM.

Professor Kremmyda leads the ENHANCE project – a community-based engineering programme, training young engineers in Asia, in particular in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam, to tackle humanitarian challenges.

The project helps higher education institutions embed community-based engineering education into their graduate engineering programmes.

It aims to empower the next generation of engineers with the knowledge, skills, and mindset necessary to address real-world challenges in collaboration with local communities, markets, and industries.

The goal is to promote collaboration, ethical and social responsibility, and transformative impact in engineering education – shaping the future of engineering by integrating academic learning with community engagement and fostering a generation of socially conscious engineers.

A Civil Engineer herself, Professor Kremmyda hopes the students will go on to have a positive impact – shaping the future and the world for the better. The project has already included more than 300 modules worldwide – and 6,000 students annually.

Alongside her research, Professor Kremmyda is also instrumental in championing the representation of women in engineering. She leads the planning, organisation and delivery of conferences for INWES – bringing together talented women in STEM from across Europe, Middle East, Asia and Pacific, Africa and North and South America.

INWES is a not-for-profit global network of organizations of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), representing over 250,000 women from 60 countries around the globe.

INWES is an official non-government organisation partner of UNESCO, holding consultative status with United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and observer status to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). INWES supports the work of UN Women and the Commission for the Status of Women.

On winning the award, Professor Kremmyda said: “I am honoured to receive the INWES Distinguished Woman in Engineering award. This recognition reflects my commitment to setting a path for aspiring women engineers and embodying the transformative spirit that shapes our global landscape.

“At the same time, it highlights the impact of powerful organisations like INWES in creating a revolution for women in science and engineering, as we collectively shape a future defined by progress, inclusivity, and extraordinary accomplishment.”

Professor John Murphy, Head of Warwick’s School of Engineering, said: “Professor Kremmyda is a true leader in Engineering education as evidenced by this major international award and her recent National Teaching Fellowship.

“At Warwick, she has pioneered new programmes in Humanitarian Engineering and has been instrumental in the launch of two Engineering Degree Apprenticeships. As Head of Teaching and Deputy Head of Department, the impact of her work on the experience of Engineering students has been substantial.

“The benefits of her work are felt by all, but she has worked particularly hard to dismantle barriers to participation, tackling persistent issues such as the underrepresentation of women, disabled people, those from ethnic minorities and socially disadvantaged groups in STEM”.

President of INWES Jung Sun Kim added: “Prof. Kremmyda is an example of excellent achievement in engineering in terms of research, education and advocacy for women in STEM. Her leadership and trailblazing contributions in Civil Engineering and overall STEM are inspirational”.

Notes to Editors

INWES was established to strengthen the capacity of individuals, organizations, and corporations to influence policies in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) worldwide, and to encourage the education, recruitment, retention, support, and advancement of professional women and students through an international network of organisations and experts.

The goal of INWES is to build a better future worldwide through the full and effective participation of women and girls in all aspects of STEM.

Find out more about INWES here: https://www.inwes.org/

The ENHANCE project was funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Key Action 2 Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices; Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education (598502-EPP-1-2018-1-UK-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP (2018-2582/001-001). 

More here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/eng/enhance/

 

 

ERC Starting Grant for TU Graz researcher Sonja Wogrin: Innovative data aggregation for decarbonized power systems

Data aggregation for modelling highly complex power systems is usually carried out without a sound theoretical basis and leads to inaccuracies. With her ERC project, Wogrin wants to change this to make the planning of future energy systems more efficient

Grant and Award Announcement

GRAZ UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

\

 

IMAGE: SONJA WOGRIN HAS HEADED THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICITY ECONOMICS AND ENERGY INNOVATION SINCE 2021 AND THE CROSS-FACULTY RESEARCH CENTER ENERGETIC AT TU GRAZ SINCE 2023. view more 

CREDIT: LUNGHAMMER - TU GRAZ

Power systems in Europe will be expanded and rebuilt in the coming decades to make them stable and carbon-neutral at the same time. Complex optimisation models are employed to make the right decisions on the path towards decarbonisation. But there is a catch. Models of realistic power systems are usually so large that even supercomputers are pushed towards their performance limits. This means that much input data (such as time series of power demand or capacity factors of renewable energy sources) is aggregated, which makes the models numerically solvable but less accurate. Sonja Wogrin, head of the Institute of Electricity Economics and Energy Innovation at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), wants to change this with her five-year project “Optimisation and data aggregation for net-zero power systems”, for which she has secured a Starting Grant of almost 1.5 million euros from the European Research Council (ERC).

Existing aggregation methods leave much potential unused

When creating optimisation models, traditional data aggregation usually focuses exclusively on the data itself, without taking into account the specifics of the optimisation model in question. This leaves a lot of aggregation potential unused, which affects the computing time and the quality of the optimisation results. As a result, investment decisions on power plant technologies, locations or grid expansion are suboptimal, so the restructuring of the energy system becomes more expensive. In her project, Wogrin wants to improve data aggregation and develop methods by which researchers can create more meaningful models with the same computing power and thus benefit society immensely. “The global power generation market size was estimated at USD 1.8 trillion in 2022” explains Wogrin. “Even if novel aggregation methods lead to decisions that are only one percent better, the impact is huge.”

Taking into account different supply situations

Wogrin’s research approach does not simply focus on single representative periods where system data is similar. Within these periods you have to differentiate whether the power supply is temporarily guaranteed purely by renewable energy (hydropower, wind, PV), or whether thermal power plants have to be switched on, or whether there could even be situations with an overall loss of load. When data of these time periods are looked at on average, situations of undersupply in the model can be completely overlooked – periods which are critical for reliable planning. Therefore, Sonja Wogrin would like to use her new method to combine situations with similar model outcomes in order to obtain compressed and yet differentiated model data.

“If we want to plan the decarbonised energy system of the future properly, there is no way around reliable modelling. After all, we have to make wise investment decisions. These models and methods should then also be available to everyone,” says Wogrin. “I am convinced that this new way of aggregating data is not only relevant to my field of research, but provides fundamental tools that can help scientists around the world.”

Fiver new positions for researchers

The funding will enable Wogrin to put together a team of probably three PhD students and one or two postdocs. The positions are to be advertised and filled before the end of the year. The ERC awards Starting Grants to researchers who conduct ground-breaking research early in their careers and establish their own independent research groups. Sonja Wogrin's Starting Grant is the eighth Starting Grant awarded to researchers at TU Graz and the first in the Department of Electrical Engineering at TU Graz. In addition, three Consolidator Grants and one Proof of Concept Grant have been obtained in the past.

Personal details:
Sonja Wogrin has headed the Institute of Electricity Economics and Energy Innovation since 2021 and the cross-faculty Research Center ENERGETIC at TU Graz since 2023. Optimisation models for complex systems, energy analytics and the decarbonisation of energy systems are among her central research goals.

This research is anchored in the Field of Expertise "Sustainable Systems", one of five strategic research focuses of TU Graz.