Workshop Series on Thermal Issues in Climate Change

Climate change is one of the most important issues of our time. The consequences of a changing climate have implications on local and global economies and human health and can exacerbate existing inequalities. Researchers in the thermal community have contributed significantly to providing engineering solutions to climate change, including improved heat transfer mechanisms for higher efficiencies, the food-energy-water nexus, and advanced material and flow behavior for renewable energy.

This award is to support a series of virtual mini-workshops on thermal issues in climate change that bring together researchers from the thermal community to nucleate and promote interdisciplinary collaborations and to collectively tackle this grand challenge. The outcome of the mini-workshops includes a roadmap for how the thermal community can work to address climate change and its societal impacts, with both short- and long-term items for implementation.

The series will strengthen a community of researchers that collaborate across institutions and fields, and will provide professional development opportunities, particularly for junior colleagues, with a focus on including members of historically under-represented groups.

The goal of this virtual series on thermal issues in climate change is to facilitate collaboration through biweekly discussion sessions that bring together multidisciplinary researchers to find intersectional areas for advancement. Each session will revolve a topic central to the impact or prevention of climate change, and feature four to six speed talks of no more than three minutes apiece, followed by a brief general discussion and breakout rooms to delve more deeply into both potential collaborations and specific topics of interest that might evolve into future funding opportunities.

For each session, there are fundamental questions underpinning the ability of the research community to address these focus areas. For example, thermal-electrical energy storage is a crucial technology in decarbonizing the current grid, as well as addressing space conditioning needs, but the underlying thermophysical phase change mechanisms of the advanced materials that can accelerate its adoption are still not well understood, including the conjugate modes of heat transfer in an active bed and the dynamic controls needed for precise operation.

Beyond the advancements in discrete topics in science and engineering, the discussion series will also aid in communication between researchers at different institutions and fields, which will contribute to the thorough identification of key research and development needs for addressing climate change. The published outcomes of the discussion series will further this goal beyond the bounds of the series itself as well.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.