Magazine fall 2023

Cover Story

Environmental Entrepreneurs

Northwestern Engineering faculty members are taking their sustainable innovations out of the lab and into industry to help mitigate the effects of climate change and pollution.

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Rapidly advancing technology has given much of the world a better quality of life. People live longer, healthier lives. They connect and collaborate with others around the world. They have access to the energy needed to power their homes, businesses, and vehicles. Yet, these same advances have also led to some of Earth’s greatest environmental problems: climate change, pollution, and contaminated water.

Many Northwestern Engineering faculty have channeled their problem-solving mindset toward sustainable solutions for some of the crises that threaten society most. By founding startups to commercialize their ideas, they can move their solutions beyond the lab and help turn the tide on environmental degradation.

Creating affordable, sustainable proteins for meat alternatives, biofuels, and biomaterials

Founded by chemical and biological engineering professor Danielle Tullman-Ercek, startup Opera Bioscience has pioneered a biomanufacturing platform that produces affordable, high-purity proteins.

Danielle Tullman Ercek This new platform reduces the cost of goods for making meat alternatives, biofuels, and biomaterials and could lead to more sustainable replacements for environmentally costly processes like animal factory farming and oil drilling.

When Tullman-Ercek joined Northwestern Engineering in 2016, she was directed to the Innovation and New Ventures Office (INVO), where she learned that her research on protein secretion—the basis for this new platform—might be worth patenting.

Soon after connecting with INVO and filing her first patent application, Tullman-Ercek founded Opera Bioscience, an acronym that stands for Optimized Protein Expression Research and Applications.

INVO connected Tullman-Ercek with Equalize, a program out of Washington University in St. Louis for women academic inventors. She participated in the program's 2022 pitch competition and was named overall winner in the MedTech category.

Today, the majority woman-owned and veteran-run startup has moved into Northwestern's Querrey InQbation Lab in downtown Evanston, where the company continues to create affordable, high-purity proteins for commercial applications.

"There's so much we're doing in the lab now that we never would've thought to do without these conversations with the business side of the world—they ask questions that we had not asked before," says Tullman-Ercek, who also serves as codirector of Northwestern's Center for Synthetic Biology.

Opera Bioscience is accelerating the pace of research in biomanufacturing affordable, high-purity proteins.

Moving society toward battery-powered transportation of all types

One day, batteries could power the semi-trucks and freight trains that carry tons of cargo long distances and airplanes that circumnavigate the globe.

To help realize this future, Mark Hersam, chair and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, has focused on improving the cathode of lithium-ion batteries. The cathode holds the lithium ions when discharged, but the surface of the cathode degrades following repeating charging and discharging cycles, which compromises the ability of the battery to store and deliver energy.

By encapsulating the cathode with a protective layer of graphene, Hersam and his team suppress the degradation that causes many lithium-ion batteries to fade, fail, and even catch fire. The graphene coating also results in a higher-energy battery that extends the driving range for electric vehicles, advances safety, improves sustainability, and lowers cost.

Hersam spun out his invention into tech startup Volexion in 2018. The next year, Volexion received the US Department of Energy's Ten at Ten Award, which honored 10 extraordinary renewable energy technologies. Then last fall, Volexion became one of the first startups to take up residence in Northwestern's Querrey InQbation Lab, where the company has access to even more of the University's world-class expertise and resources.

Volexion is working to scale up its new technology so it can engage potential customers, move into the marketplace, and eventually lower carbon emissions. The InQbation Lab is assisting the company in doing just that.

"Taking our technology to market and ultimately incorporating it into devices and vehicles that everyone uses will have direct impact on society," Hersam says.

Mark Hersam delivered the September 2023 MIT.nano seminar on mixed-dimensional heterostructures for electronic and energy technologies.

Enabling easy, affordable water testing to improve lives worldwide

Billions of people live in areas where the water supply is contaminated. Many, if not most, lack a practical, affordable means to determine whether their water is safe to use.

To help test water in these areas, chemical and biological engineering professor Julius Lucks and his collaborators developed an accurate, low-cost, and easy-to-use bio-sensor device to detect water contaminants. The cell-free system emits light when mixed with target compounds, including fluoride and lead.

To commercialize the technology, Lucks and the team launched startup Stemloop in 2019. Since then, Lucks has field-tested the technology in Kenya, showing the potential for finding harmful contaminants without sending samples to labs that have specialized equipment.

Now, Stemloop is focusing on launching its first product: a home test to detect lead in drinking water. The company is also part of a team that was awarded a National Science Foundation grant to provide access to at-home water tests for lead, copper, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as "forever chemicals." The team, which combines experts from Northwestern's Center for Synthetic Biology, Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, and Institute for Policy Research, will measure the tests' impact and use the knowledge gained to improve people's daily lives.

"It's clear that we need to enable people with information to make important, sometimes lifesaving decisions," says Lucks, who is also codirector of the Center for Synthetic Biology. "People need at-home tests because they need that information quickly and regularly. There are many cases where water quality needs to be measured routinely. It's not a one-time thing because contamination levels can change over time."

New device harnesses synthetic biology to detect contaminants in a few minutes with a single sample of water.

Turning underground structures into renewable energy sources

Underground temperatures continue to rise because of the heat that diffuses from buildings and subsurface transportation—a phenomenon that scientists refer to as "underground climate change." This can cause building foundations and the surrounding ground to move excessively and even crack, which ultimately will affect a structure's long-term operational performance and durability.

Alessandro Rotta Loria, Louis Berger Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, studied the effects of these deformations using more than 150 temperature sensors across Chicago's downtown area. He then built a 3D computer model to simulate how the ground deforms in response to these increasing temperatures, showing that the city is slowly sinking.

Not content just to measure the effects of underground climate change, Rotta Loria and his collaborators have also devised a way to put that extra heat to work. He and a team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have developed prefabricated geothermal panels that harness untapped renewable geothermal and waste thermal energy from underground. These thin panels absorb heat from underground spaces (like parking garages or tunnels)and the surrounding ground, then use that energy with electric heat pumps to meet the thermal energy requirements of buildings and infrastructures.

The solution has been commercialized by the cleantech spin-off Enerdrape, founded in 2021. Rotta Loria, a cofounder, serves as CTO of the company, which recently installed 200 panels in a parking garage near Lausanne as a pilot project and will soon deploy another pilot installation in Chicago.

"These panels essentially turn underground infrastructures into renewable energy sources," Rotta Loria says. "Our panels offer a way to transition to efficient renewable energy systems in existing urban environments."

A new Northwestern University study has, for the first time, linked underground climate change to the shifting ground beneath urban areas.

Cleaning up oil spills at lower cost and higher speed with less negative impact on the environment

Thousands of oil spills happen each year, coating wildlife with residue and releasing toxic compounds that can have lasting effects on the ecosystem.

In 2020, Vinayak Dravid, Abraham Harris Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and his senior group member Vikas Nandwana developed a highly porous sponge that selectively soaks up oil in water. The sponge harnesses the power of an oleophilic hydrophobic multifunctional coating developed by Dravid and his group, which can selectively sequester oil and oil-related complexes. Able to absorb more than 30 times its weight in oil, the sponge could be used to clean up oil spills inexpensively and efficiently without harming marine life.

To commercialize the research, Dravid and Nandwana launched the startup MFNS Tech, which has used the sponge's patented nanostructure coating to develop products that can help businesses and communities clean up oil and filter water to remove other pollutants, like factory runoff. Earlier this year, the company secured seed investment to develop more products based on the coating.

"Although many oil spills are small and may not make the evening news, they are still profoundly invasive to the ecosystem and surrounding community," Dravid says. "Our sponge can remediate these spills in a more economic, efficient, and eco-friendly manner than any of the current state-of-the-art solutions."

National Science Foundation coverage of Dravid's nanocomposite coating of magnetic nanostructures that attracts oil and resists water.

Lab Tour: Materials Innovation Lab

Researchers in Northwestern Engineering’s Materials Innovation Lab are advancing additive manufacturing at the nanoscale, developing methods to produce sustainable materials and inks that will help build the biosensors, batteries, transistors, and neuromorphic devices of the future.

Big Idea: Just How Old is the Moon?

In a new study made possible by Northwestern University’s Center for Atom-Probe Tomography, researchers analyzed tiny lunar crystals gathered in 1972 by Apollo 17 astronauts and found that the Moon is actually 4.46 billion years old—40 million years older than previously thought.

Opening the Way to a Future in Engineering

Engineering Tomorrow founder Bill Woodburn helps underserved high school students discover their potential for a career in engineering by introducing them to STEM subjects.

Learning What Design Really Means

Applying the design thinking she developed at Northwestern, Hannah Chung has built an enterprising professional life centered around social good.

A Process of Discovery

David Hinton turned his chemical engineering studies into a 22-year investment career.

International Experiences Expand Engineering Perspectives

Northwestern Engineering students deepen their understanding of global challenges firsthand through learning experiences worldwide.

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Applying Math to Answer Life's Fundamental Questions

In the new National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology, Northwestern Engineering faculty will decode biological findings using the language of mathematics.

Activating the Potential of AI

Three graduate-level programs in artificial intelligence and data science equip leaders to meet tomorrow’s challenges while Northwestern Engineering researchers push the technology’s boundaries across multiple fields.