Noteworthy: What's Up at IonE

 

Happy Returns

Like a 20-to-1 return on your investment? Over the past three years, IonE has used $6.6 million in University of Minnesota funds and $13.2 million in pass-through funds from the State of Minnesota’s Renewable Development Fund to leverage more than $134 million in additional federal, corporate and other funding.

William Eddy

Eye of the Beholder Slide Show

What memorable view has left you in awe of our amazing Earth? This photo of Half Moon Bay State Beach in California depicts Momentum photo contest winner William C. Eddy’s response to that question. Want to be notified about our next contest? Join Momentum’s Facebook page. View the slide show

Earthducation

Into Africa [PHOTO BY JUSTIN EVIDON]

University of Minnesota Arctic explorers Aaron Doering and Charles Miller (CEHD) shed their parkas to spend two weeks in Burkina Faso, Africa, earlier this year on the first leg of Earthducation, an IonE-sponsored adventure-learning expedition aimed at discovering how education, environment and sustainability interconnect around the world.

Majora Carter

Urban Inspiration [PHOTO BY JOSH KOHANEK]

Eco-entrepreneur Majora Carter catapulted IonE’s Momentum 2011 event series into the Twin Cities spotlight March 10 with inspirational insights on how communities are finding new futures through environment-centered urban renewal.

Feeding a Crowd

Guess who’s coming to dinner? Nine billion people by 2050. How to feed them all without trashing the planet? IonE’s Global Landscapes Initiative is on it. Teaming with industry, foundations and nonprofits, GLI is mapping crop production, ag inputs and environmental impacts  around the world to boost food  production while protecting Earth’s infrastructure.

After the Fall

When the I-35W bridge crumpled beneath rush-hour traffic in August 2007, a lot of other things fell apart, too. Pat Nunnally of the River Life program led a group examining how the bridge collapse altered our understanding of the river, region, city and transportation.  Essays from the symposium have now been published by the University of Minnesota Press as The City, the River, the Bridge.

One-Minute IonE

What is the Institute on the Environment? What does it do? If you have a minute, we have a video that will fill you in. Watch the video

Plants, Unite!

People know a lot about plants – but what we know is scattered across thousands of universities, government labs, nonprofit organizations and other research entities. With funding from an IonE Discovery Grant, resident fellow Peter Reich (CFANS) and colleagues aim to integrate plant trait data from around the world into a single searchable database.

EESy Does It

Wind, solar and other energy innovations are sparking interest in careers in electrical energy systems (EES). With the help of a $155,000 matching grant from IonE’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment, Ned Mohan (CSE) leveraged a $4 million grant to lead an 80-university push to revitalize undergraduate electric energy education throughout the U.S.

Mini Grants

Ten new projects got a mini boost from IonE’s first round of Mini Grant awards in March. From developing a sustainable agriculture certificate program to fighting microbial assaults on food supplies, the projects will give emerging innovators a chance to kick-start their ideas for improving the ability of humans and other living things to thrive in a changing world.

Sun x 3,000

By bringing the sun’s power indoors, Davidson and colleague Wojciech Lipinski are speeding the pace of IREE-funded studies aimed at finding a commercially viable way to turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels using concentrated solar energy. If they’re successful, we’ll be able to easily store solar energy, then use it to run cars and other components.

 

COLLEGE KEY: CBS, College of Biological Sciences; CEHD, College of Education and Human Development; CFANS, College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences; CSE, College of Science and Engineering