Peru is a land of contrasts— sky-painted
mountains and the mysterious Amazon, a wide desert that brushes the blue
Pacific, and areas of a thriving tourist and natural resources-based economy paired with smoldering socio-economic
unrest and political turmoil. A resilient but vulnerable nation committed to
developing a strong educational ecosystem and the largest annual GDP growth in
Latin America in recent years, Peruvians also struggle with significant
environmental issues that impact the quality of their water and the food they
produce, the need to adapt to a changing climate, and the need to transform
their economy from one focused on natural resources extraction to one centered
on value-added products and technology-driven innovation. It is at this crossroads of past and future,
resilience and vulnerability, that the Arequipa Nexus Institute was born, an
enterprising marriage of institutions on a quest to make a sustainability and
technology-drive innovation a reality for Peru’s future generations.
The Arequipa Nexus Institute is an
ambitious collaboration between Purdue University and the Universidad Nacional
de San Agustin (UNSA), located in Arequipa, Peru. Launched in April 2018, the
goal of the institute is to work together to develop high social impact
solutions to the numerous challenges that lie ahead for the Arequipa region,
and for Peru and Latin America. Measuring the economic and social benefits that
mining, intensive agriculture, and burgeoning urbanization have brought against
the inevitable downside (desertification, soil erosion, and damage to water
resources, to name a few) generates a dangerous equation. The fallout from climate change is an
undeniable fact of life in Peru. The
cost to economies, ecosystems, and livelihoods cannot be underestimated. Any attempt to balance this equation must
contain solutions that are grounded in the unique lifestyles, behaviors, and
attitudes of the residents of the region, and be tailored to local ecosystems,
conditions, and ecologies.
Discovery Park’s Center for the
Environment is Purdue’s administrative and collaborative link to UNSA and the Nexus
Institute. Working with leadership and faculty at Purdue and UNSA, C4E has
developed a research and educational ecosystem that leverages Purdue’s
strengths and maps them to UNSA’s and Arequipa’s needs. The
Nexus Institute links over 50 Purdue University faculty spanning 7 colleges
with 40 faculty from UNSA into a
program to study the interconnected food-energy-water systems in the region. The
institute also provides funding for 23 postdoctoral researchers working between
Purdue and UNSA, and myriad students at both institutions are involved in the
research as well.
The vision of the Nexus Institute is
for UNSA to build core research capacity and capability in the Arequipa region
of Peru in relevant areas, nurture the research ecosystem to provide novel,
best-practice solutions to the area’s challenges, and turn research and
education into practical applications and local solutions with high societal
impact. The research underpinning this institute is coordinated through the
activities of thematic programs that emphasize 1) Sustainable Watershed Management and the development of data,
models, and tools to address food, energy, and water management, 2) Research on
Soil and Water Quality that establishes and supports monitoring stations for soil,
sediment, and water, and creates research facilities for analysis of soil and
aquatic microbiology, geochemistry, and environmental contaminants, as well
as research in spatial mapping and
visualization, 3) Work on Agricultural
Innovation and Demonstration to promote sustainable crop and animal
production using advanced technologies in genetics, breeding, storage, and pest
control, and 4) Social Sciences and the Environment addresses socio-environmental
challenges related to food and water security, agriculture, and mining, and
empowers the local community to be involved in decision-making.
Projects
in the Nexus Institute are designed to accelerate solutions to Peru’s complex, interconnected socio-economic and environmental
challenges. Key to success are meaningful collaborations among U.S. and Peruvian university
researchers, local communities, government, industry, and other stakeholders. For instance, a team led by Laura Bowling
(Purdue) and Edwin Bocardo (UNSA) is working to address
concerns about the sustainability of water
resources management in the Arequipa region, which is threatened by
water scarcity, degraded water quality and a changing climate. The team uses an iterative
approach to stakeholder engagement within the region’s urban and rural
communities to co-produce cutting-edge decision-making tools based
on the application of state of the art land surface models. Their
work will help understand how climate change is impacting local and
regional resource management and how community livelihood, structure, and
vulnerability are affected by these changes. Other digital mapping platforms
will be created to put existing and newly acquired data in the hands of decision makers and practitioners allowing
for science-based management and assessment of the impact
of nutrients,
metals, and salinization on soil quality in this this newly-created,
intensively managed landscape. Coupled
with the on-going collaborative development of
new interdisciplinary laboratory’s and analytical facilities at UNSA, these types of projects will form the basis for science-driven, culturally-relevant,
and co-produced land
management best practices.
Establishment of
the Nexus Institute laid the foundation for expansion to other areas and
universities in Peru. Indeed, two new
MOUs have been signed, one between Purdue and Asociación Nacional de Universidades Públicas del Perú (ANUPP-Perú) — the
national association of Peruvian public universities, and the other between
Purdue and REDISUR (the Interuniversity Network of Southern Peru) that will
foster continuing cooperation in education and research between the
entities. These agreements have
established a collaborative framework for conducting international research for
all public universities in Peru and for all the public and private universities
under REDISUR. By standardizing this
framework, future partnerships have a clear roadmap which will facilitate a
smoother path to more productive, high societal impact research.
Peru and other like-minded countries in Latin America have the natural resources, the educational systems, the culture and the people to become future global economic growth engines. Their way of life and their global views are consistent and aligned with those of the West in general, and of the U.S. in particular. The value of interdisciplinary, international cooperation has been demonstrated and is incontrovertible. By creating these research and education-driven programs like the Arequipa Nexus Institute, not only do we hope to have a positive impact on major societal challenges, but to open up new pathways for stronger relations that will lead to a better understanding between the peoples of Latin America and the United States, and to better and stronger economic development and opportunities for all.
Tomas Diaz de la Rubia is the Vice President for Purdue’s Discovery Park. Tim Filley, professor of geochemistry and soil science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and the Department of Agronomy at Purdue University, is the director of Discovery Park’s Center for the Environment.
Today our planet sustains more human life at a given time than ever before. In the last 200 years, our population has grown from 1 billion to 7.6 billion and by 2050 the global population is estimated to reach new staggering heights, just short of 10 billion. Our society will need to change and adapt to accommodate increased urbanization and a growing middle class, an aging population and a rising demand for food, water and energy.
To address this growth, in January 2016, the United Nations announced a new effort, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which is an appeal to all nations to tackle this global grand challenge. The SDGs are “a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity” by meeting various targets and indicators by 2030.
Of the 17 goals laid out by the UN, eight are closely tied to water, food and land. It is at this nexus that the heart of this grand challenge lies and our strategic theme on global sustainability is focused on. Today, many countries struggle with reliable access to clean water. Our aging infrastructure and energy grid are not optimized to allow for the coming population boom. Increased demands for energy, water and land resources are further straining the global food production system.
Can the future demands for food, fuel, clean water, biodiversity, climate change mitigation and poverty reduction be reconciled?
This is precisely the question that one of our Big Idea Challenge winning teams seeks to answer. Tom Hertel and his team have set their sights on tackling the food, energy, water, and environment nexus in their proposal, Managing the Global Commons: Sustainable Agriculture and Use of the World’s Land and Water Resources in the 21st Century. Hertel and his team posit that the sustainable development challenge is a particularly wicked problem, as sustainability is fundamentally a local concept, yet is driven by global forces. Pursuit of the SDGs will also have global consequences and analysis of these complex issues requires a holistic approach.
Hertel’s team aims to develop an interdisciplinary applied research consortium, which will analyze impact scenarios and explore policy alternatives that promote responsible public and private investment; sustainable management of critical, shared natural resources; and collective action toward meeting the SDGs. The framework Hertel’s team proposes is seamless, transparent, flexible and replicable. The on-campus resources and members of Hertel’s team are just part of why Purdue is situated to be a leader in open-source, global assessment of the SDGs related to food, land and water. Our unique combination of strengths in agriculture, computer science, engineering, hydrology, climate and global economic analysis position Purdue at the forefront of taking on these grand challenges.
Sustainable development and use of any nation’s land and water resources requires an understanding of the complex environmental, social and economic drivers that must be harnessed to maintain the availability of future food, water and energy resources with minimal negative effects. With its core strengths in STEM, advanced instrumentation, social and behavioral sciences, under its global sustainability strategic theme, Discovery Park is making connections abroad to help solve these pressing sustainability issues.
This spring, Discovery Park signed an MOU with the Universidad Nacional de San Agustin (UNSA) in Arequipa, Peru. A team of Purdue representatives visited the university to discuss how they could collaboratively tackle the biggest land, water, food, infrastructure and technological challenges facing Peru and Latin America today. The team met with UNSA leadership, faculty and students over the course of four days and exchanged information, experiences and conducted a needs assessment, which will serve as the foundation for a collaborative institutional partnership between Purdue and UNSA.
The Purdue team is working with UNSA to become a point of reference in Latin America for interdisciplinary research. The UNSA Nexus Institute will focus on four intersecting strategic themes: watershed management, environment, agriculture and soil quality. The new research hub will enable the sustainable use of Arequipa’s water, soil, plant and animal resources through the construction of state-of-the-art instrumentation monitoring and experimentation stations, the use of simulation modeling and collaboration with Purdue researchers.
Several Purdue faculty and Discovery Park researchers on the Purdue Team including: Tim Filley, director of the Center for the Environment; Indrajeet Chauby, department head of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; and Daniel Leon-Salas, associate professor in the School of Engineering Technology in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, have been a critical part of the UNSA partnership and developing the projects that will drive the Nexus Institute. The joint goal of Purdue and UNSA faculty is to ensure long-lasting positive impact on our communities across all socio-economic levels and mutual knowledge exchange and collaboration.
The response from our faculty and their collaborators to get involved with and contribute to the UNSA partnership and Big Idea Challenge to address these grand challenges has been humbling. Though perhaps more importantly, the efforts of our researchers to tackle the biggest sustainability challenges facing our world today transcends these projects and are part of a much broader, integrated vision, to work across disciplinary boundaries which makes up Discovery Park’s global sustainability strategic theme.
Through the work of a number of our centers—the Center for the Environment, Purdue Climate Change Research Center and Center for Global Food Security, to name a few—our faculty are creating solutions to the problems at the heart of the global sustainability challenge. Their work is critical to Discovery Park’s vision to advance energy and resource innovation, deepen our understanding of the science of climate and resilience and develop new methods and practices to alleviate uncertainty regarding food supply and malnutrition.
The solutions to the SDGs are undoubtedly complex and will require not only understanding of these intricacies of the global sustainability nexus, but innovation as well. At Purdue, we are proud of the strides our researchers are making, which boldly confront these complex and evolving global challenges.
Ten billion people. Megacities. Massive increases in food production. Double, even triple energy demand. Impacts of climate change and the need for access to clean water. Potential pandemics. We face many challenges to sustain our planet’s quality of life, today and for decades to come. Daunting? Exceedingly so. The future of society hangs in the balance.
Rising to meet these challenges: a focused convergence of technological experts and social scientists.
Tapping Technology
From nanotechnology to synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, quantum computing and robotics, technology is advancing exponentially. As the cost of many technologies decreases, global access to their benefits increases faster than we ever envisioned. Technology, then, promises to help us tackle and solve grand challenges.
Today we speak of a future where everything is “smart” and “precise.” Precision agriculture and medicine and smart transportation, cities and manufacturing are a sampling of the current rhetoric about the future of everything. In this future, technology augments human capacity, presenting yet another challenge: fewer people will be needed in the workplace.
Heeding Societal Implications
As technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics replace humans on the job, what is the future of work?
In 1810, about 95 percent of the U.S. population worked in agriculture. Today, only about 2 percent do. In those 200 years, we transformed the nature of work, found new jobs and trained our growing population. However, exponential technology begets exponential change, and the McKinsey Global Institute predicts by 2035, just 18 years from now, about 45 percent of today’s jobs will be performed by machines. To ameliorate this transition, some advocate for a universal basic income to replace work-related income. In my opinion, the issues are broader than income support and need a fuller consideration. We must ask: What are the ethical, legal and societal implications of such a movement?
Solving these global challenges calls for addressing societal issues through deep and rigorous research. Technology and the social sciences together must inform new, “smart” policies to help us progress.
Transdisciplinary Work at Purdue Policy Research Institute
While definitive answers are yet to be determined, faculty at Purdue University’s Discovery Park are seeking solutions rooted in transdisciplinary research and education. True solutions, with positive social impact, require working across and beyond traditional boundaries that often separate humanists and social scientists from natural scientists, engineers and technologists. At Discovery Park, these disciplines converge to address global challenges.
One example is the Purdue Policy Research Institute, led by S. Laurel Weldon, distinguished professor of political science, which works across traditional boundaries to better understand how the convergence of technology and social sciences can yield well-informed policy and a better understanding of our changing world.
The power of this approach is illustrated in the Mellon Foundation-funded partnership between Purdue Libraries and the Institute. Purdue researchers are taking a unique approach in their research, developing and integrating innovative models of scholarly communication by embedding publishing professionals, library faculty and policy experts in the research and communication process. The approach is also unique in involving humanists and social scientists at the core of efforts to understand and find solutions to grand challenges.
This grant four interdisciplinary teams who are tackling issues such as sustainability in U.S. agriculture, big data ethics, climate change governance and the effectiveness of science-policy interaction, and decision support tools for flood risk mitigation.
Autonomous Systems
The Institute is also undertaking research—initially through a fellowship program—in autonomous systems. While technology enabling autonomous vehicles is developing quickly, the ethical, legal and societal implications of these future transportation and mobility systems are not yet thoroughly understood. PPRI aims to catalyze the discussions, and ultimately the research, to fill this gap, again, by involving scholars from multiple disciplines and stakeholders in the research process right from the start.
Similarly, unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are growing in popularity and for a variety of purposes. Like many technologies, they are proliferating at a greater pace than regulations to ensure safety and security without unduly restricting growth in technology and industry. The Institute has created the Drone Regulatory Research Initiative, a public/private, interdisciplinary partnership, to deepen understanding of these issues and develop fresh approaches and alternative solutions.
This project brings together engineers, aviation technology experts, social scientists, agricultural scientists and others. In 2016-2017, an interdisciplinary group of honors students worked with the Institute staff to develop a brief outlining the main uses and policy issues, and a policy brief series will run through this academic year. The Institute has also developed partnerships with Airmap and Pierce Aerospace, participates in the University Aviation Association for education and policy analysis subcommittee, and contributes to federal regulations and policy implementation of drones.
Net-Zero Energy Housing
Yet another area is the importance of policy supporting sustainable, accessible-to-all and affordable housing. The Institute is working with Purdue political science professor Leigh Raymond, former director of the Center for the Environment, on net-zero energy housing, to employ “smart” technologies to develop housing returning as much energy to the grid as it takes away. Raymond, who will be a PPRI Faculty Fellow this academic year, is leading the project, which, in partnership with the State of Indiana’s Energy Systems Network and Move Forward Program, will develop both technological solutions and a policy framework to make net-zero feasible. When technology and social policy integrate to address grand challenges, it can help us solve seemingly intractable situations.
Gender Equality
Weldon’s own research focuses on gender equality and public policy, a grand challenge area necessitating transdisciplinary research. This year, the Institute plans to further develop work on women’s human rights and the connection to science and technology issues. A major part is understanding how social norms, including attitudes about gender, affect the ways we use or do not use science and technology to their greatest effect.
For example, technology can help or hinder women’s access to markets and economic empowerment. The Internet, for example, can facilitate opportunity for women while also being a source of online violence and harassment. Cell phones and cashless banking make it possible for women in the developing world to work and access funds without exposing themselves to sexual assault and harassment as they travel to distant financial institutions. However, women are disproportionately disadvantaged by the emphasis on cell phones in much of the developed world. The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates women in low-to-middle income countries are 20 percent less likely to have a mobile phone, a gap meaning some 300 million women in the developing world lack access to phones. Weldon will make a presentation on this subject for the Dawn or Doom series next month, and will take part in the “goalkeepers” events organized in New York City next month to focus attention on the Sustainable Development Goals and the progress that has been made on women’s human rights.
These are a few ways technologists and social scientists are partnering to address holistically some grand challenges so tomorrow’s megacities, energy and water demands and income opportunities benefit all. Look for many more convergence stories to emerge from Purdue’s Discovery Park.
I arrived at my office ready to engage in the rest of the day’s activities. On my one hour commute from my house on the beach, I had been able to participate in our weekly board meeting with partners from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. The Virtual Reality system in the Connected and Autonomous Transportation Vehicle (CATV) that had picked me up at my doorstep that morning had worked, as always, flawlessly and the global partners meeting in our secure virtual conference room had gone off without a hitch. I even had 15 minutes left over to enjoy a cup of coffee while watching the news and catching up on the day’s upcoming events.
How far, or how near, is this future? Not a day goes by when we do not read something in the press about progress in autonomous cars, virtual reality, artificial intelligence or a host of other digital technologies. Companies all over the world are innovating in these spaces at a fast and furious pace. However, and despite all the progress we read about, a myriad of technical, policy, legal, regulatory and even ethical challenges remain that must be overcome for a future such as this to become reality. In fact, I would argue that the ultimate, integrated system of systems solution appears distant.
CATVs are not about traditional automotive technology; they are about wireless communication, smart cities and smart infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, cybersecurity, 3D mapping, big data, functional sensors, electric batteries, 3D printing and other advanced technologies that have little to do with the traditional focus of the automotive industry. As a result, the job market of the future for students that graduate from universities like Purdue will be with new and different companies that integrate software, hardware, infrastructure, and autonomy systems and sell completely new products and systems into new, yet to be fully understood markets.
Leading universities around the U.S. and the world are making a strong, strategic push to be at the forefront of the development of these new technologies. State and federal research agencies are starting to develop programs that increasingly focus research funding and policy studies into these spaces. At Purdue’s Discovery Park, we are launching a new initiative focused on research, development, testing and evaluation of technological systems and human factors for the CAT future. Building on our long and illustrious history of excellence in transportation research, we are partnering with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, the Indiana Department of Transportation, the Indiana Governor’s Office, Deloitte Consulting, the Transportation Development Group and many private sector companies to explore the feasibility and opportunity to develop a state-of-the-art CAT testing and R&D facility next to the Purdue campus.
The idea is that such a facility would attract all the leading global suppliers of CAT technologies not just to test their technologies and system solutions in a simulated but well controlled urban and rural environment, but also to partner with Purdue faculty and students in developing next generation technologies and systems. Moreover, a facility such as this would serve as a magnet for federal and state resources to perform research on advanced sensors, AI, big data and analytics, communication, cybersecurity, safety, urban and landscape design, policy and regulation, ethics and other related topics.
This grand vision is compelling, but we are not the only ones thinking this way. Therefore, we need to lean on the tremendous interest of our faculty and students to develop a coherent strategic roadmap that will identify our competitive advantages, and will tell us where to play and how to win. To do this, we can build from a foundation of excellence.
Faculty at Purdue have been, and continue to be, involved in federal and state programs that focus on the future of transportation. Prof. Srini Peeta in the School of Civil Engineering has been a leader in the development of integrated and sustainable transportation solutions through his leadership of the NEXTRANS Center, a U.S. Department of Transportation center in operation since 2007. NEXTRANS’s Driving Simulator Laboratory is a quasi-living laboratory for mobility and safety research, interactive learning and outreach that develops behavioral and operational models and assesses impacts to address current and emerging needs. A new center, also supported by the U.S. DOT, and led at Purdue by Prof. Peeta in partnership with the University of Michigan and other Midwest universities, CCAT, will explore the full picture of how communities can best transition to connected and automated vehicles.
Prof. Greg Shaver in the School of Mechanical Engineering has partnered with Cummins and Peloton, a California Start Up, to explore the future of connected and autonomous class-8 trucks via a new grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). Prof. Darcy Bullock, also of the School of Civil Engineering is the longtime leader of the State of Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) Joint Transportation Research Program which facilitates collaboration between INDOT, higher education institutions and industry to implement innovations that result in continuous improvement in the planning, design, construction, operation, management and economic efficiency of the Indiana transportation infrastructure.
Similarly, Prof. Andrew Tarko, a world leader in transportation safety studies and in civil engineering, leads the INDOT-funded Center for Road Safety, which seeks to provide data and knowledge for a changing automotive transportation system, to foster and coordinate transportation research in both technical and policy areas. Prof. Richard Voyles, in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, works with his students to develop 1/8th scale autonomous cars for testing behavior and performance in extreme environments.
In addition to these and other ongoing automotive and transportation research efforts, Purdue has exceptional capabilities through its faculty in the colleges of Science, Engineering, Agriculture, Liberal Arts, Health and Human Sciences and the Purdue Polytechnic Institute related to control systems, cybersecurity, AI and machine learning, landscape architecture, consumer psychology, policy, robotics and many other topics, all of which are related and fundamental to progress toward an autonomous future.
By weaving our strengths together into a tightly knit and coherent transdisciplinary effort, and creating the public and private partnerships necessary for success, I believe that when we sit in an autonomous vehicle fifteen or twenty years from now on the way to a new destination, we will be able to look back with pride at the role that Purdue University played in leading and enabling the success of the massive societal transformation that autonomy represents.
It started with a brainstorming session. We wanted to find new ways to impact some of the most wicked global challenges society faces today, and change the world for the better in the process. We understood the power of convergence, and believed that an approach that coupled research in traditionally siloed STEM disciplines with novel digital technologies and data-based approaches, could provide new insights to confront and tackle many of these grand challenges, particularly when augmented by research and insights from the social sciences and the humanities.
In an effort to capitalize on this idea, and catalyze the type of transdisciplinary research that would bring truly wholistic approaches to solving wicked social problems, we launched a new program: The Discovery Park Big Idea Challenge. Our goal was to harness the strengths of Purdue University, and to provide resources to transdisciplinary teams of Purdue faculty and students pursuing new, bold and innovative ideas with the potential for transformative impact on society.
We issued the call for proposals in October of 2016, and the response from across the university was nothing short of phenomenal. Discovery Park received 46 proposals from more than 230 faculty, representing all 10 colleges and 45 departments. Of those 46 proposals, 16 were selected to advance to a final round. Those teams presented the value proposition of their Big Idea to a panel of judges, which included senior Purdue faculty and other external leaders from industry and academia.
While we were very fortunate to receive many outstanding proposals and compelling presentations, at the end of the deliberation, the frontrunners emerged. The seven winning teams will position Discovery Park, and by extension Purdue, as a leader in generating new solutions to global grand challenges in the areas of sustainability, health and security.
Revolutionizing Control of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases
PI: Catherine Hill, professor of entomology and vector biology, Department of Entomology
Overview: New and reemerging mosquito-borne diseases such as Zika, malaria and dengue are on the rise as a result of unprecedented human population growth, habitat destruction and climate change. Scientists are seeking to develop a robust arsenal of weapons to combat these diseases. Hill’s team aims to meet this challenge by developing new control technologies based on non-toxic and non-lethal pesticides that suppress pathogen transmission by mosquitoes. Ultimately, they intend to create and commercialize compounds that disrupt disease transmission from mosquito to human without killing the insect and while preserving biodiversity.
Affordable Net Zero Housing and Transportation Solutions
PI: Leigh Raymond, professor of political science and director of the Center for the Environment in Discovery Park
Overview: Current housing and transportation options create environmental and social challenges and, in particular, impose high costs on low-income families. Drawing on expertise from multiple departments and colleges, Raymond and his team aim to transform the affordable housing sector so that onsite renewable energy and smart home and transportation technologies are the rule rather than the exception.
Harnessing Technology and Information Fusion to Enable Resilient and Sustainable Food-Water Balance under Evolving Environmental Conditions
PI: David S. Ebert, the Silicon Valley Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of VACCINE (Visual Analytics for Command, Control and Interoperability Environments)
Overview: By the year 2030, food production must be increased by 70 percent in order to feed a larger world population. Today, almost 80 percent of the world’s fresh water withdrawals from rivers, lakes and aquifers go to agriculture. Ebert and his collaborators will develop a human-computer collaborative decision-making system for sustainable agriculture that takes into account the complex relationships between real-world data, the socio-political environment and on-the-ground practices. The system will provide planners and policy- and decision-makers with more accurate information than previously possible, helping growers to optimize crop yields and minimize use of water and other resources.
Managing the Global Commons: Sustainable Agriculture and Use of World’s Land and Water Resources
PI: Thomas Hertel, Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Economics
Overview: The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are focused on ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. Meeting that goal will require reconciling future demands for food, energy, clean water, biodiversity, climate change mitigation and poverty reduction. Examining the possibility of win-win outcomes, Hertel and his team will establish an applied research consortium to analyze scenarios and explore policy alternatives that promote responsible public and private investment; sustainable management of critical, shared natural resources; and collective action toward meeting the UN’s SDG.
Photonics Science and Technologies for Security and Healthcare Applications
PI: Yong P. Chen, professor of physics and astronomy and of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Purdue Quantum Center
Overview: Approximately 50 million people in the U.S. alone become ill because of contamination by foodborne pathogens and other agents every year. Conventional and standard bacterial detection methods may take up to several hours or even a few days to yield an answer, and are inadequate to solve this problem. Building upon Purdue’s expertise in photonic science and engineering, and collaborations between multiple disciplines and stakeholders, Chen and his team intend to develop photonics-based food pathogen sensors that bridge the gap between university-scale research and real-world deployment, offering enhanced performance at lower cost.
Realizing Next-Generation Smart Manufacturing
PI: Nathan Hartman, the Dauch Family Endowed Professor and Associate Head, Department of Computer Graphics Technology, and director of Purdue’s Product Lifecycle Management Center of Excellence
Overview: The digital revolution ― driven by the rapid emergence of new technologies such as 3D printing, the Internet of Things (IOT), autonomous systems, robotics and others ― is changing the way humans live, work and play. In particular, it is transforming manufacturing, which is experiencing a fourth industrial revolution. Exploring approaches to digitalization throughout manufacturing, Hartman’s team will engage with stakeholders, create roadmaps and develop a cohesive, multidisciplinary approach to next-generation manufacturing aimed at creating a new competitive edge for U.S. manufacturers, and at training the next generation of talent that will carry this revolution forward.
Towards Cyber-Physical Vetting of Critical Infrastructures
PI: Dongyan Xu, professor of computer science and interim director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)
Overview: Critical cyber-enabled infrastructures, such as those in civil, energy, manufacturing and defense domains, are increasingly the target of cyber or physical attacks that pose significant threats to organizational and national security. However, no strong defenses currently exist that span both the cyber and physical domains. Xu and his team aim to develop an integrated framework for vetting a cyber-physical infrastructure system from both the cyber and the physical perspectives simultaneously. The outcome is expected to provide a new set of models, methods and tools for defending a wide range of cyber-physical infrastructures such as dams, nuclear facilities, IOT systems and others.
These winning teams will receive funding for up to two years, based on the scope, milestones and budget laid out in the proposals submitted. While this funding alone will not be sufficient to truly tackle and solve a challenge of the magnitude and scope presented by these teams, it will help nurture ideas and create opportunities for new and significant external funding—both public and private– that will position these teams and the university as leaders in their areas of endeavor. The teams will chart new pathways to discoveries, innovations and social and policy solutions, while training the next generation of future leaders and interdisciplinary talent.
Because we received a number of exemplary proposals, we also plan to work with the teams that did not obtain funding in this first round to help them identify other partner organizations and mechanisms for achieving their research goals.
We are thrilled to be able to work with these teams, and invite you to follow this blog for updates to their progress and for more information about the transformative work happening at Purdue University and Discovery Park.
