Latest Events

Speaker: Professor Jonathan Cullen, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge.

More details at https://www.csar.org.uk/lectures/2023-2024/tbc_20240429/

Plastics are ubiquitous in modern society. The attractiveness and popularity of plastics stems from their range of properties, their cost-effectiveness and the utility they deliver in society. Plastic production grew rapidly from the 1950s, driven by an ever-increasing range of new polymer materials with exceptional properties—being strong, lightweight, durable, and low-cost—and the many new products on offer. However, rising demand for plastics and the sheer diversity of plastic products available make action to achieve net zero emission targets especially challenging and pressing.

Plastics are hard to live with and hard to live without. The positive social and economic impacts of the petrochemical sector are accompanied by a huge environmental burden. Today, we make about 420 Mt of plastic products, resulting in 1.8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or 3.4% of global emissions. By 2060, emissions from the plastics lifecycle are set to more than double, reaching 4.3 billion tonnes of GHG emissions. Climate action requires a radical new relationship between consumers and plastic manufacturers.

What to do about plastics? This talk draws from five years of research at Cambridge, aimed at understanding the GHG impact of plastics across the full lifecycle (production, use and disposal) and exploring all possible options for mitigating the carbon impacts of plastics production.

We need to get an idea of numbers for the refreshments, so if you plan to attend in person, please book at
https://bookwhen.com/csar
In-person tickets are free for individual, family, business/institution/donor, concessionary and school members. You can buy a Pay-as-you-Go ticket for £5 or £3 concessionary (undergraduate or postgraduate students, recent PhD - within 2 years - or those on a low income).
Zoom viewing is free for all - but please come along in person - it's much more friendly!

For in-person attendance:

1) Coffee/tea/biscuits/wine are available from 7 pm outside the Wolfson Theatre, and you can buy self-service dinner before the talk in the main Dining Hall. The Dining hall opens at 17:45, and the CSAR team generally turn up there with the speakers just after 18:00, until about 19:00.

2) Questions from the live audience will be possible, with roving microphones.

3) Usually there's a chance to chat with the speakers and other attendees in Churchill's excellent bar afterwards.

For Zoom participation:

1) Here's the link to join the meeting online using Zoom:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84026121458?pwd=JM6aI9oG3Jjsb2rjrlbHntBrG2h6yg.5vbuLK1fBCSkIZqc
Passcode: 803511

2) We will be able to take only written questions from you, via the Zoom Chat facility.

Professor Jonathan Cullen, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge

Jonathan Cullen is the Professor of Sustainable Engineering at the University of Cambridge and the President of Fitzwilliam College. He leads the Resource Efficiency Collective (www.refficiency.org) and has a reputation for top-down studies of resource systems, bringing skills in developing new metrics to reflect both energy and emissions consequences of materials production. Jonathan currently leads C-THRU: carbon clarity in the global petrochemical supply chain (VKRF), and is a co-investigator on: S2uPPlant: Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging from Plants (UKRI), TransFIRe: Foundation Industries Research and Innovation Hub (UKRI), UK FIRES: Locating Resource Efficiency at the heart of Future Industrial Strategy (EPSRC), CCG: Climate Compatible Growth (FCDO). He is a Lead Author for the IPCC AR6 Industry Chapter, an Expert Adviser to the IEA Technology Roadmaps, and co-authored the book Sustainable Materials: with both eyes open, which pioneered the concept of material efficiency for energy-intensive industries.

Speaker: Arthur van Benthem (Wharton School) 

Arthur van Benthem is an Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at Wharton. He is also the Faculty Co-Director of the Wharton Climate Center. His research specializes in environmental and energy economics. His recent work studies the unintended consequences of environmental legislation and the economic efficiency of energy policies. His current research focuses on markets for transportation, renewable energy, and oil & gas.

EPRG Energy & Environment Seminars Easter Term 2024 Tuesdays fortnightly at 12.30-1.30pm (in-person) Please contact EPRG Administrator (eprgadm@jbs.cam.ac.uk) for further details

Chaired by Academy CEO Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE, this Critical Conversation will discuss the nuclear technologies that can help achieve a decarbonised energy system by 2035, and the challenges faced in delivering them.

As the UK works towards a decarbonised energy system, what will the role of nuclear power be over the next decade or so? What new technologies will help deliver energy decarbonisation? And what challenges do we face in fully realising the technology's role? Join us on LinkedIn live, and submit your questions to our panel.

Guest speakers to be announced shortly.

Register to attend: https://raeng.org.uk/events/2024/april/what-s-next-for-nuclear-power-in-...

Critical Conversations series

Bringing together the thoughts of leading experts from across the Academy’s networks, our Critical Conversations explore issues of relevance to global professional engineering community and wider society. Fellows, awardees, and engineering partners gather to tackle topical issues of relevance to the global professional engineering community and wider society.

Catch up on all previous Critical Conversations here.

The School of Physical Sciences and School of Technology Research Relations Team invites you to an information session about the Wellcome Trust’s Discovery Research programme, especially designed for researchers in SPS and SoT.

The session will be presented by Sarah Lloyd, Senior Research Manager, Discovery Research, Wellcome. It will focus on exploring funding opportunities for physical sciences and technology research. Wellcome supports research from any discipline as long as it has the potential to improve human life, health and wellbeing, and aligns with Wellcome’s funding remit.

This is an excellent opportunity for those who are not very familiar with Wellcome to hear about the remit of its discovery research programme as well as key features of the schemes, review processes and topics such as exploring research culture in Wellcome applications.

There will be an initial overview of the Wellcome remit, followed by two sessions, one aimed at PIs and focused on Discovery Awards, and one aimed at postdocs and Early Career Researchers looking at Wellcome Fellowship schemes. We invite you to attend all or any parts you will find most useful.

When: Thursday 2nd May, 11am – 2.15pm

Where: Room East 1, West Hub, University of Cambridge, JJ Thomson Avenue, CB3 0US 

Who this is open to: This event is open to any researchers in the Schools of the Physical Sciences and Technology, and collaborators in other parts of the University.

How to register: Please complete the MS Teams registration form here by Wednesday 24th April.

Once signed up, please hold the time in your calendar; we will circulate a diary invitation to all registrants in due course.

Agenda:

11.00 – 11.15am              Arrival & welcome

11.15 – 11.45am              Overview of Wellcome remit – how technology and physical sciences fit into the discovery science portfolio.

11.45 – 12.15am              Focus session on Wellcome Discovery Awards – key features, review process, panels, research culture and other topics of interest

12.15 – 12.30pm             Q&A

12.30 – 1.15pm                Lunch and free networking

1.15 – 1.50pm                   Focus session on Fellowship schemes (Early Career Awards and Career Development Awards)

1.50 – 2.00pm                   View from a successful Fellow – Dr Mateo Sanchez Lopez (Dept. Chemistry)

2.00 – 2.15pm                   Q&A

If you have any questions feel free to contact me at SPSResearchFacilitator@admin.cam.ac.uk.

Climate change and sustainability are social issues, to a large extent perpetuated by social, political, and economic systems that shape and govern our access to resources, livelihood possibilities, and capacity to change, as well as to utilise old and new technologies and livelihood practices in order to mitigate and adapt to new realities. Furthermore, the way we talk about and frame these issues also shapes how we conceive of solutions and our abilities as individuals and communities to act.

Cambridge Zero and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) invite you to the Symposium 'Climate change is a social issue! taking place at the Alison Richard Building on the 7th May 2024.The symposium will bring into focus the impact and contributions the social sciences, arts, and humanities have had on climate and sustainability-related discussions, ranging from engaging communities and practitioners to instigate climate action; (re-)framing climate and environmental narratives, solutions, and technologies; allaying emotions of anxieties, grief and loss; contextualising the ‘place’, geographies, and politics of green transitions and climate-related negotiations; to creating usable and applied histories and archaeologies. Changing our understanding of climate change and sustainability issues, how they arose, and how they can exacerbate unjust transitions is a huge endeavour that is hard to quantify and hardly recognised, but has potentially huge social impacts.

The symposium will feature a number of keynote presentations from senior Cambridge academics, and we are inviting submissions from Early Career Researchers (Cambridge Postdocs, PhD and Masters students) to present their research. The symposium aims is to highlight the necessity of social science, humanities, and arts research around climate change as well as to strengthen collaboration cross-disciplinary collaboration including with STEM disciplines, business, and others, in order to make social, policy, economic, and technological advances more impactful at local and national scales.

Keynotes:

• Prof Christine Schwöbel-Patel
• Dr Liam Saddington
• TBD

We invite researchers to speak on (but not limited to):

• Changing and re-framing climate narratives among communities, authorities, and policy makers
• New frameworks that help communities, businesses, and authorities to adapt to new climate realities and increase access to resources
• The impact of climate policies, systems, and technologies on politics, economics, and societies
• The use, re-use, and (re-)invention of old and new social practices, livelihood strategies, infrastructure, and technologies to adapt and mitigate new climate realities
• Localisation of climate and environmental change
• Climate communication that makes the effects of climate and sustainability more tangible, relatable and experiential
• Shaping perspectives on health through climate and vice versa
• Barriers and solutions to sustainable and just net-zero transitions
• Religious thought and practice as motivator, resistor and/or guide for climate engagement

Cambridge Early Career Researchers can submit their abstract here!