Optimistic about the future
I’m sitting in the Florida Keys as I write this, finally able, with co-instructor Ray Najjar, to run our biannual marine biogeochemistry field trip, graciously funded by alumna Jan Kappmeyer and her husband, Drew Isaacs. COVID-19 isn’t quite in the rearview mirror, but it feels like it down here: after all testing negative and spending much of our time outdoors, we’re mask-free and enjoying discovering the secrets of nature together. We’ll return to State College if the typical Spring Break snowstorm allows, and transition to the “new normal” having learned from the lessons of the past two years.
Learning from the past, both deep time and the more recent past, to better predict the future is one of the many things this college does particularly well. In this issue we learn how Kim Lau is decoding the rock record to learn about environmental conditions that led to the “Great Dying” some 250 million years ago, when most species on Earth went extinct. Climate change seems to have been a major driver of extinction back then, and as we learn from Ken Davis, climate change poses a significant threat to the planet today. In response, society is undertaking an energy transition from the fossil fuels that have powered the industrial era and the information age to the renewable energy sources of the future. That transition will require raw materials necessary for solar panels and wind turbines, as well as for semiconductors, cell phones, advanced medical instruments, and defense systems. As it has in the past, Penn State is collaborating with the Commonwealth to utilize its vast resources, in this case, rare earth elements, lithium, cobalt, manganese, aluminum, and other materials present as natural ores but also abundant in coal waste. Sarma Pisupati is leading the effort to bring together Penn State’s research and manufacturing expertise to capitalize on this opportunity. Our materials science and engineering researchers, led by Joan Redwing, are inventing new ways in which extremely thin, two-dimensional materials will revolutionize electronics of the future. And Karl Zimmerer explains how growth of urban areas may be getting a bad rap in terms of its impact on food and land use.
All that our faculty, staff, and students are learning about the past and, together with our alumni and friends, doing to create a better future, fills me with optimism. I hope it does for you as well. Please consider us your lifelong partner in this journey.
Lee Kump