Carnegie Mellon University has received a $1.85 million grant to develop a regulatory structure for clean energy technology.
CMU’s M. Granger Morgan will lead a team of researchers from CMU, the University of Minnesota, the Vermont Law School and the Washington, D.C.-based energy law firm Van Ness Feldman in a study that will help develop the safest, most effective ways to capture, transport and store large quantities of CO2 underground in geological formations. Sequestering CO2 results in less air pollution and fine particulates in the air.
The grant was given by the New York-based Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va., is supporting much of the research needed to make the process commercially viable.
Secondly, a groundbreaking method that will significantly advance imaging technology for nanoscale science is the focus of a $1 million grant given to the University of Pittsburgh by the W. M. Keck Foundation.
The grant will enable researchers to develop a method to observe and control the motion of atoms within single molecules as they oscillate along individual chemical bonds, which acts as springs, says Hrvoje Petek, principal investigator and professor of physics and Chemistry at Pitt. Petek invented time-resolved photoemission electron microscopy, the enabling technique which will be used as a stepping stone to develop methods to probe motion of single molecules.
While several leading research groups around the world are exploring different ways to develop dimensional imaging techniques of molecules undergoing structural changes, Pitt researchers have developed a unique method that uses light to excite single molecules for imaging.
“Our goal is to learn how to excite and observe such motion with the ultimate goal of developing single molecule machines. The ability to control the molecular motion would give us the means to develop molecular scale devices,” Petek says.
Writer: Deb Smit
Source: Hrvoje Petek, University of Pittsburgh; Chriss Swaney, CMU