27th Annual Stauffer Lectureship (Day 2 of 2): Professor Emily A. Carter, Princeton University
by David Kelly Crow
About the Lecture
How Quantum Mechanics Can Help Identify Mechanisms and Design Materials to Combat Climate Change
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
More than fifteen years ago, I decided to reorient all of my research to work on sustainable energy solutions. I am a theoretical physical chemist by training but have spent more than half of my career as a faculty member in engineering departments because I care not only about beautiful fundamental science but I also aspire to have societal impact. While initially my sustainable energy research emphasized developing and applying quantum-mechanics-based simulation techniques to inform design of better materials for carbon-emission-free electricity (e.g., solar cells, fusion reactor walls, fuel cells), my more recent work aims to use such simulations to design catalysts and optimize processes for renewable fuels and chemicals production, via, e.g., electro-/solar-thermo-chemical water splitting and photo/electro/solar-thermo-chemical carbon dioxide reduction. If we could make fuels efficiently from carbon dioxide and water – effectively running combustion backwards – via optimal catalysts and processes that utilize energy from sunlight and/or carbon-emission-free electricity instead of from fossil fuels, we could recycle carbon rather than continue extracting and adding more of it to the atmosphere and oceans. However, just recycling carbon dioxide is far from sufficient. We must convert and store carbon dioxide for centuries. In addition to geological sequestration of carbon dioxide, we must develop sustainable processes to convert CO2 into products that are useful and that durably store carbon. In this talk, I will describe our quantum embedding simulation methods that accurately simulate sustainable production of fuels and chemicals catalytically using electricity and/or sunlight, and introduce for the first time our quantum embedding method’s use in studying processes related to direct ocean capture of CO2 to form minerals, a strategy for getting to negative emissions enabled by electrocatalysis. These approaches, along with available and emerging strategies in agriculture, forestry, and construction, may let our descendants still enjoy the world we have been lucky enough to inhabit up to now.
About the Speaker
Emily A. Carter is a member of the executive management team at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), serving as Senior Strategic Advisor and Associate Laboratory Director for Applied Materials and Sustainability Sciences. She is also the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University. Since arriving at PPPL in 2022, she began working to diversify this Department of Energy national laboratory’s research portfolio into the science of electromanufacturing and solar radiation management; her portfolio expanded to include microelectronics and quantum information science in 2023. A physical chemist by training, Dr. Carter began her independent academic career at UCLA in 1988, rising through the chemistry and biochemistry faculty ranks before moving to Princeton University in 2004, where she spent the next 15 years as a jointly appointed faculty member in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and applied and computational mathematics. She was the Founding Director of Princeton’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment from 2010 to 2016 and then became Princeton’s Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science (2016-19) before being recruited back to UCLA in 2019 as its Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and as Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Dr. Carter maintains an active research presence, developing and applying quantum mechanical simulation techniques to enable discovery and design of materials for sustainable production of fuels, chemicals, and materials. Her research is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, as well as Princeton University. The author of over 450 publications and patents, Dr. Carter has delivered nearly 600 invited and plenary lectures worldwide and serves on advisory boards spanning a wide range of disciplines. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Inventors, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and the European Academy of Sciences. Dr. Carter earned a B.S. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1982 and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Caltech in 1987, followed by a brief postdoc at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Host: Todd Martinez