Song Awarded Funding as Scialog Fellow in Negative Emissions
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January 25, 2024
Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering (UT PGE) Assistant Professor Wen Song was selected as a Scialog Fellow in Negative Emissions Science, organized by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and ClimateWorks Foundation. As part of the program, she has been awarded research funding by the Sloan Foundation and is one of 20 scientists on seven cross-disciplinary teams across the United States and Canada to receive funding.
Dr. Song’s award will fund ML-ROCKS: Machine Learning Reaction Optimization of Carbonation KineticS, which will study CO2 mineralization as a means of subsurface carbon dioxide storage. ML-ROCKS is a collaboration between Song, Rachel Davidson (assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of Delaware), and Michael Ross (assistant professor of chemistry at University of Massachusetts Lowell).
Song is a George H. Fancher Assistant Professor of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering in UT PGE. Her research focuses on understanding and leveraging the fundamental micro/nanoscale transport dynamics that dictate subsurface energy and environmental resources. Her key contributions toward addressing the challenge of supplying reliable, sustainable energy to the world include the development of the first operando visualization platform that allows in situ observation of reaction kinetics and reactive transport within nanoporous materials, and pioneering the field of real-rock microfluidics to enable direct, real-time, pore-scale visualization of transport dynamics in micro/nanofluidic systems with representative geometric and chemical characteristics. Her recent honors include the 2023 Arie van Weelden Award from the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE), a 2022 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and a DNI Award from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF).
Scialog — short for “science + dialog” — was created in 2010 by RCSA to stimulate intensive interdisciplinary conversation and community building around a scientific theme of global importance. Negative Emissions Science, the Scialog initiative that is funding ML-ROCKS, is in its fourth and final year and aims to advance the underlying science needed to make technologies to capture and utilize greenhouse gases globally scalable.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a not-for-profit, mission-driven grantmaking institution dedicated to improving the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge. Established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of the General Motors Corporation, the Foundation makes grants in four broad areas: direct support of research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and economics; initiatives to increase the quality, equity, diversity and inclusiveness of scientific institutions and the science workforce; projects to develop or leverage technology to empower research; and efforts to enhance and deepen public engagement with science and scientists.
