Biomass is a terrible energy source – that’s why we don’t run our economy on wood anymore. But it is a fantastic carbon source, half carbon by weight. What if we could get rid of biomass waste by using clean, pollution-free ways to convert it into hydrogen, and permanently store the resulting CO2? There are some significant challenges to this future: eliminating air pollution, building supply chains that permit long-term operation, and integrating the demands of energy production and carbon removal. But these are all manageable challenges.

In October 2021, a pipeline leaked about 25,000 gallons of oil into the ocean off the Orange County coast. The oil caked beaches and killed marine life, and almost as soon as it happened two UC Irvine Ph.D. students, Joana Tavares from the Department of Earth System Science and Melissa Brock from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, got to work.

On behalf of Dean James Bullock, please join us for our second annual Bright Past, Brilliant Future: A Year in Review.

Dean Bullock will provide an exclusive review of the School of Physical Sciences' most recent accomplishments and share his bold vision for the future of the School. Followed by a Q&A session.

Thursday, January 13, 2022
 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. PT
Online via Zoom

Watch the recording here.

You read about FASER last winter — the new particle detector designed and built by UCI physicists that just might discover evidence for the existence of the biggest thing in the universe — now see it with your own eyes during a live stream event featuring three of the scientists behind the project: Professors Jonathan Feng and David Casper, and Ph.D. student Savannah Shively. 

Watch the YouTube recording here.

One studies the fabric of the Universe, one studies the oceans, and one studies mathematics and cancer. They come from different fields, but they all speak a common language, one that orbits around how to grapple with big sets of data using artificial intelligence tools like machine learning. In this latest episode of Compelling Conversations from the UCI School of Physical Sciences, join Dean James Bullock as he moderates a chat between three scientists — Ph.D.