In spring 2017, the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and the Yale Office of Sustainability partnered to offer funding to undergraduate, graduate, professional, and doctoral students for sustainability projects that directly support the objectives of the Yale Sustainability Plan 2025. Four projects were selected and awarded an Actionable Research Grant.
The funded projects are focused on issues ranging from waste reduction to climate action. Teams represent a broad range of disciplines including students from Yale College, the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and the Yale School of Management (SOM).
The following projects were awarded grants, and are currently in development.
Minimal Disposal Patterns for Catered Events A student team at the Yale School of Public Health, SWAY, is leading an initiative to provide reusable food and beverage containers to the entire YSPH community. Submitted by Sheridan Finnie, YSPH ’18, the project aims to reduce the use of disposable items such as paper, plastic, and Styrofoam, and promote an internal culture shift towards reusable items and environmental stewardship. Additionally, the team is creating training sessions and redesigning spaces within YSPH to lay the ground for the necessary knowledge and infrastructure for a Bring Your Own (BYO) culture. Outcomes of the project will help inform best practices around BYO and reuse culture for other departments and units.
Energy Transition in Germany and the Future of Sustainable Design Yale undergraduate Ashlyn Oakes ‘18 is conducting case studies of various cities in Germany as they implement the Energiewende, Germany’s transition to a low carbon future. Oakes aims to find conclusive data on the practicality of the energy and design goals laid out in the Energiewende, and use this data to help inform Yale’s strategies to achieve carbon neutrality by or before 2050. Oakes spent the summer in Germany, collecting data and talking with stakeholders. Majoring in architecture, her research will be design-based and architecture-centric, focusing on the built environment.
Turboarcjet: Space Technology for a clean airline industry Xavier Morin, SOM ‘18, is working on a zero-emission jet engine. Morin and a team that includes seven Yale Engineers are leveraging space technology to create a clean jet engine with the goal of reducing carbon emissions from air flight. The technology would replace the combustion of fuel in a combustion chamber with an electrical arc of comparable power.
Analysis towards Implementation of a thermoGreenWallTM Heat Rejection Technology Yale undergraduates David Amanfu ’18, Ivy Li ’20, Kevin Koste ’19, and Acheampong Atta-Boateng, a postdoctoral associate at SEAS, are researching thermoGreenWallTM techonology (tGW). Green walls are vertically constructed wetlands that passively regulate a building’s cooling and heating needs. The team will collect data from an existing tGW at Greely Memorial Lab to inform the design of a prototype at 221 Whitney Avenue.
Yale is committed to building a more sustainable world. By doing what we do best—integrating science, the humanities, and our community—Yale creates, tests and adopts innovative solutions to the environmental and social challenges we all face.