Energy Solutions (Video)

Oil and gas are the most traded commodities on the planet; they are also the chief causes of the most grievous harm our species has yet faced, the burgeoning climate crisis. Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He examines how the export of hydrocarbons, in particular, has become an enormous threat to efforts to rein in greenhouse gasses. It explores the role that America – the world’s biggest exporter of gas – plays in this ongoing catastrophe. And it looks at the role that non-tradeable commodities – sunshine and wind – play in easing this crisis. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 40220]

What role do oil companies have in tackling climate change? In this program, Paasha Mahdavi, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UC Santa Barbara, talks about the challenge of getting big oil to take climate change seriously. Mahdavi's research broadly explores comparative environmental politics and the political consequences of natural resource wealth. He is the author of Power Grab: Political Survival Through Extractive Resource Nationalization (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which shows how dictators maintain their grip on power by seizing control of oil, metals, and minerals production. Additional recent work includes the effects of oil-to-cash transfers on civic engagement; the political economy of fossil fuel subsidy reform; and the efficacy of policies to eliminate natural gas flaring. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 39442]

How can we use raw materials to improve the environment? In this program, Susannah L. Scott, professor of chemistry at UC Santa Barbara, discusses how to efficiently use catalytic conversion of unconventional materials, such as biomass and synthetic polymers to create sustainable routes to renewable energy, fuels and chemicals. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 39440]

Effective management of thermal-fluids transport has become a critical challenge in many energy, water, and electronic applications due to the increasing power density and shrinking length scales. In this talk, I will first describe our effort to manipulate multi-phase fluid motion using light-responsive surfactants. Upon illuminating droplets and bubbles with light, the surfactants at the fluid-fluid interfaces go through photo-isomerization, which changes the local interfacial tension and introduces a Marangoni flow. The resulting interfacial shear stress generates a net force on the bubble or the droplets, causing them to depart or slide along the surface. We demonstrate real-time manipulation of multi-phase fluidic systems using low intensity light which can potentially enhance phase change heat transfer. I will also describe our effort to achieve passive salt-rejecting solar thermal desalination by thin-film condensation in microporous membrane which utilizes ample three-phase contact area, salt diffusion and a low vapor transport resistance. With our design, we demonstrate continuous desalination of seawater for 7-days in one Sun with no salt precipitation. These examples demonstrate the potential of combining fundamental thermo-fluid science and advanced micro/nano engineering approaches to address many of the pressing thermal challenges in energy and water systems. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 39330]

Modern slavery, which encompasses 45 million people around the world, is intricately linked to the economy, politics, violence and war, gender and the environment. In this panel discussion, Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery and research director of the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham, talks about the impact of contemporary slavery with three UC Berkeley professors, Arlie Hochschild, professor emerita, Department of Sociology, Enrique Lopezlira, Ph.D., director, Low-Wage Work Program, and Eric Stover, adjunct law professor and faculty director, Human Rights Center. Slave-based activities, like brick making and deforestation, are estimated to generate 2.54 billion tonnes of CO2 per year – greater than the individual emissions of all the world’s nations except China and the U.S. Globally, slaves are forced to do work that is highly destructive to the environment. This work feeds directly into global consumption in foodstuffs, in minerals – both precious and for electronics – construction materials, clothing, and foodstuffs. Most of this work is unregulated leading to extensive poisoning of watersheds, the clear-cutting of forests, and enormous and unregulated emissions of carcinogenic gases as well as CO2. Political corruption supports this slave-based environmental destruction and its human damage. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Science] [Business] [Show ID: 38615]

There are 45 million enslaved people in the world today. The links between slavery, conflict, environmental destruction, economics and consumption began to strengthen and evolve in the 20th century. The availability of people who might be enslaved dramatically increased in line with population growth. According to Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery and research director of the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham, the large and negative environmental impact of modern slavery is just now coming to light. Slave-based activities, like brick making and deforestation, are estimated to generate 2.54 billion tonnes of CO2 per year – greater than the individual emissions of all the world’s nations except China and the U.S. Globally, slaves are forced to do work that is highly destructive to the environment. This work feeds directly into global consumption in foodstuffs, in minerals – both precious and for electronics – construction materials, clothing, and foodstuffs. Most of this work is unregulated leading to extensive poisoning of watersheds, the clear-cutting of forests, and enormous and unregulated emissions of carcinogenic gases as well as CO2. Political corruption supports this slave-based environmental destruction and its human damage. Kevin Bales, CMG, FRSA is Professor of Contemporary Slavery and Research Director of the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham. He co-founded the American NGO Free the Slaves. His 1999 book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy has been published in twelve languages. Desmond Tutu called it “a well researched, scholarly and deeply disturbing expose of modern slavery.” The film based on Disposable People, which he co-wrote, won the Peabody Award and two Emmys. The Association of British Universities named his work one of “100 World-Changing Discoveries.” In 2007 he published Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves (Grawemeyer Award). In 2009, with Ron Soodalter, he published The Slave Next Door: Modern Slavery in the United States. In 2016 his research institute was awarded the Queens Anniversary Prize, and he published Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World. Check out his TEDTalk. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Science] [Business] [Show ID: 38614]

Lei Li is an assistant professor in Computer Science Department at University of California Santa Barbara. His research interest lies in natural language processing, machine translation, and AI-powered drug discovery. He received his B.S. from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38476]

Rob Ober is Chief Platform Architect of NVIDIA’s data center products, and works with global Hyperscales to architect AI and Deep Learning clusters, develop systems and platform architecture, and influence NVIDIA hardware and software platform roadmaps. His background is in processor and system architecture, with experience in networking, storage, memories, and wireless. Rob has over 40 international patents in processor architecture, low power design, storage, networks, wireless, and mobile devices. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38472]

Yufei Ding joined the Department of Computer Science (with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering), University of California at Santa Barbara as an Assistant Professor in Nov 2017. Her research interests lie in the broad fields of domain-specific language design, architecture and compiler optimization, and hardware acceleration. Her current research focuses on building high-performance, energy-efficient, and high-fidelity programming frameworks for emerging technologies such as quantum computing, machine learning, and deep learning. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38474]

Katharine E. Schmidtke received a B.Sc. Degree in physics and mathematics from Keele University, UK, in 1989 and Ph.D in laser physics and non-linear optics from the University of Southampton in 1993. She went on to do post-doctoral research in epitaxial growth of non-linear optical materials at Stanford University, CA, USA. She has a 25-year career in the optical communications industry including roles at Finisar, JDS Uniphase and New Focus. For the past 7 years she has worked at Facebook, Menlo Park, CA where she has driven the technology strategy for data center optical interconnects. She is currently Director of Sourcing for ASICS and Custom Silicon focused on AI/ML applications. Dr. Schmidtke is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and has been an invited speaker and served on committees for numerous international conferences, including Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) European Conference on Communications (ECOC) and the Optical Interconnects Conference. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38480]

Dan Nall is a professional engineer, a registered architect, an ASHRAE and an AIA Fellow, a LEED Fellow, an ASHRAE Certified Building Energy Modeling Professional, a certified High Performance Building Design Professional and a Certified Passive House Consultant. He is currently a member of the ASHRAE Task Force for Building Decarbonization, is Chair of ASHRAE Standards Project Committee 227P, the Passive Building Design Standard, and is a member of the Commercial Buildings Working Group of the New York City Local Law 97 (Building Carbon Emissions Limitation) Advisory Group. He has been involved in building energy efficiency and HVAC engineering for 45 years. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38478]

Martin Fischer is the Kumagai Professor of Engineering at Stanford University and directs the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering. He is known globally for his work and leadership in developing and applying digital methods to increase the productivity of construction project teams, enhance building performance, and create new strategic opportunities for firms in the construction industry. His award-winning research results have been used operationally and strategically by many industrial and government organizations around the world. He has co-authored the book “Integrating Project Delivery” published by Wiley in 2017, written over 100 refereed journal articles and book chapters, and given over 100 keynote lectures on his research. His work has been recognized by the ASCE Peurifoy Construction Research Award and with elections to the National Academy of Construction in the US and the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences in Sweden. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38479]

Cliff Young is a software engineer in Google Research, where he works on codesign for deep learning accelerators. He is one of the designers of Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) and one of the founders of the MLPerf benchmark. Previously, Cliff built special- purpose supercomputers for molecular dynamics at D. E. Shaw Research and was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs. Cliff holds AB, MS, and PhD degrees in computer science from Harvard University. Cliff is a member of ACM and IEEE. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38473]

Surendra Anubolu is a Distinguished Engineer at Broadcom in the Switch Group. He is currently working on benchmarking and enhancing performance of distributed AI work loads and telemetry for network applications. Since joining Broadcom in 2015, Surendra worked on the Tomahawk and Trident line of products. Prior to Broadcom, Surendra worked at Cisco as Director of Engineering responsible for delivering Ethernet switch silicon. Surendra Anubolu holds an MS from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38475]

Mead Rusert is President of Automated Logic, a leading provider of innovative building automation and energy management solutions that maximize energy efficiency and ensure occupant comfort and engagement. With over 30 years of industry experience, he brings a broad background to the position including executive roles in engineering, product management, and marketing for commercial HVAC products at Carrier Corporation. He holds three patents related to temperature control algorithms. Mead earned a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master’s degree in business administration from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38477]

Bharath Muthiah is a Technical Lead in Meta’s Infrastructure team and leads technical sourcing for large scale AI HW cluster technologies and solutions. In this capacity, Bharath engages extensively with Meta’s strategic technology partners, industry consortiums, hyperscale peers, and academic partners in influencing customization and optimizations for Meta’s key AI use cases. Prior to this, Bharath led the technical sourcing and enabling efforts for Meta’s Compute and Video Infrastructure efforts as well as jump starting Meta’s technical engagements in the custom silicon and ASIC spaces. Prior to Meta, Bharath had 15 years of experience in the Datacenter and Cloud Infrastructure spaces spanning various strategy, product management, and engineering roles at Intel. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38471]

UC Santa Barbara's Clint Schow discusses how to bring low-power O-band coherent optics to data centers. Schow received B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. After positions at IBM and Agility Communications, Dr. Schow spent more than a decade at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, as a Research Staff Member and Manager of the Optical Link and System Design group. He has led international R&D programs spanning chip-to-chip optical links, VCSEL and Si photonic transceivers, nanophotonic switches, and new system architectures enabled by high- bandwidth, low-latency photonic networks. In 2015, Dr. Schow joined the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Dr. Schow has been an invited speaker and served on committees for numerous international conferences. He is a Fellow of the OSA and the IEEE, has published more than 200 journal and conference articles, and has 33 issued patents. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38468]

Ravi Agarwal is a technical sourcing manager at the Facebook Infrastructure group. In this role, he is responsible for driving advanced packaging architectures and foundry for both networking and AI/ML compute applications to meet Facebook future workloads. He is driving Chiplet Business Workstream in Open Domain-Specific Architecture (ODSA) Sub-Project within the Open Compute Project (OCP) working with ecosystem partners to enable Chiplet marketplace. Prior to Facebook, he spent 12+ years at Intel Corporation and Amkor Technologies, where he held several leadership positions. In his last role at Intel, he was Chief of Staff to Intel Global Supply Chain Corp. Vice President. Ravi received PhD dual major in Materials Science & Engineering and Polymer Science from North Carolina State University and MBA from University of California Berkeley. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38469]

Manish Mehta is the VP of Marketing and Operations for the Optical Systems Division at Broadcom. Manish leads go-to- market and operational activity for the division responsible for developing and manufacturing devices and systems used in optical communications. Prior to joining Broadcom, Manish was EVP and Product Line Management of Source Photonics where he led the company's entry into the datacenter market. Manish holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from The University of California, Santa Barbara, and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38465]

High Volume Silicon Photonics for Co-Packaged Optics and Optical I/O with Thomas Liljeberg of Intel. Series: "Institute for Energy Efficiency" [Science] [Show ID: 38466]