2024 New's Items

Berkeley — Capturing and storing the carbon dioxide humans produce is key to lowering atmospheric greenhouse gases and slowing global warming, but today's carbon capture technologies work well only for concentrated sources of carbon, such as power plant exhaust. The same methods cannot efficiently capture carbon dioxide from ambient air, where concentrations are hundreds of times lower than in flue gases.

Yet direct air capture, or DAC, is being counted on to reverse the rise of CO2 levels, which have reached 426 parts per million (ppm), 50% higher than levels before...

"The Council of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has endorsed the NAE 2025 Nominating Committee’s[1] recommendation of Tsu-Jae King Liu, dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, to stand as the sole candidate for the NAE presidency. NAE members will vote in March 2025 to elect a new NAE president to a six-year term beginning July 1....

Omar Yaghi was honored for "groundbreaking contributions to the discovery and development of nanoporous framework materials, and advancing their applications in carbon capture, hydrogen storage, and water harvesting from desert air. Yaghi developed foundational design principles and innovative synthetic methods, creating two extensive classes of nanoporous materials: metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). These pioneering materials are now at the forefront of global efforts to tackle critical sustainability and environmental challenges...

The program was established to develop, sustain, and promote scientificand academic excellence in Office of Science (SC) research throughcollaborations between universities and national laboratories.

Persson was honored for “pioneering advancements in data-drivenmaterials design and discovery through first-principles basedcomputations and analysis algorithms that yield materials with optimalproperties for engineers and scientists worldwide to accelerateinnovation, and for her management...