Tom Murphy, director of the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research at Penn State, will answer questions around solar development in his talk "Utility Scale Solar and Pennsylvania – Trends, Impacts, and Implications."
Jenn Baka, associate professor of geography at Penn State, received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award to examine a new cracker plant’s impact on humans’ relationship to the environment and environmental policymaking.
Nelson Dzade, assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State, will provide a snapshot of the status and future direction of the field of computational materials science, and will illustrate developments from his most recent work in using first-principles calculations to unravel the microscopic fabric of surface and interfacial phenomena in thin-film solar cells.
Lexie Hain, director of agrivoltaics and land management at Lightsource bp, will introduce solar grazing as an agrivoltaic practice, and discuss ecosystem service considerations, as well as aspects of performance, professionalism, and potential implementation in her talk "Agricultural integration and solar facilities: Agrivoltaics in context" at 4 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 24.
Niko Kochendoerfer, a postdoctoral fellow in animal sciences at Cornell University, will deliver the talk "Effect of sheep stocking rate on ecosystem parameters in ground-mounted solar arrays " at 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 14.
The second annual Penn State Solar Law Symposium will be held via webinar from noon to 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 16.
Two Penn State researchers received a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation through the Belmont Forum to study actual and perceived impacts of land abandonment on the sustainability of soil and water resources.
A new study may fill in gaps in understanding public perception toward prescribed burns in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, where these fires are increasingly used, according to scientists.
This fall, NASA’s Curiosity rover reached new heights.
Three Penn State faculty — Kate Freeman, Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences, Christopher House, professor of geosciences, and Allison Baczynski, associate research professor of geosciences — have been selected to join the NASA Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to analyze samples from the asteroid Bennu.