Human activity created a crisis, but cutting-edge research could curb our carbon footprint.
The world is hotter today than at any time in the past 100,000 years. Concentrations of greenhouse gasses are at the highest amount in the last 800,000 years. Coastal areas are sinking, sea levels are rising, and extreme weather conditions like hurricanes, heatwaves, wildfires, and landslides, are becoming more frequent, and more severe. Researchers in the College of Engineering know mitigating climate change is critical for a liveable future, and they’re applying their engineering prowess to solve the most pressing environmental threats of our time.
While climate change is likely to affect everyone on earth in some capacity, people of color, those economically disadvantaged, and politically marginalized communities bear a larger burden of the consequences. Alba Yerro-Colom, Christina DiMarino, Jennifer Irish, and Sheima Khatib are just a few of the college's climate focused researchers tackling the consequences the human footprint has caused.
Alba Yerro-Colom
Associate Professor, civil and environmental engineering
Alba Yerro-Colom, a civil engineer, and recent CAREER award recipient, uses numerical frameworks and artificial intelligence (AI) to study and predict landslides. Her ongoing work aims to develop a numerical framework to advance the understanding of rainfall-triggered landslides to better predict their potential damage. Landslides aren’t necessarily front of mind, but with climate change affecting global weather, extreme conditions create more opportunities for natural disasters to devastate communities. Public preparedness is crucial, and so another facet of Yerro-Colom’s research includes creating open-source educational materials based on her findings to better prepare low-income and vulnerable communities for natural disasters. In her words…
What’s the problem both locally and globally?
Globally, one fifth of the land's surface is classified as highly susceptible to rainfall triggered landslides. Between 2007 and 2015, 7,000 rainfall triggered landslides killed over 25,000 people and injured another 2,000, according to NASA’s Global Landslide Catalog. In addition, a global climate change scenario that predicts altered rainfall patterns anticipates an increase in landslide frequency. The prediction and prevention of these events is extremely complex. The initial slope conditions, including soil parameters and vegetation, and rainfall characteristics have a direct impact on the overall failure process and its consequences. We know that vegetation absorbs some of the water and makes the soil stronger, but the overall effect of the vegetation on landslide dynamics is unknown. Having a better understanding of how different vegetation types and changes in rainfall patterns affect the stability of slopes could decrease the magnitude of a landslide’s devastation.
Locally, landslides are a significant issue in Appalachia, including Virginia, due to the region's steep terrain. For instance, during 2024’s Hurricane Helene, the U.S. Geological Survey identified at least 230 landslides. Debris flows and flash floods are also common in the area.
My project also includes educational and outreach activities that seek to serve local, low-income, and rural communities in Appalachia. I’m working with the Science Museum of Western Virginia in Roanoke, on an interactive, permanent exhibit to expose children and teenagers to the fundamental concepts related to water and soil stability. Kids will get to play with sand, wet and dry dirt, and clay to test the idea of soil strength. In creating a mock “landslide” we hope to educate this younger audience and empower them to understand the rapidly evolving natural world around them.
What does your research aim to solve and what might the consequences be if the problem is left unresolved?
I am a geotechnical engineer, so I study natural hazards that involve the ground and its interaction with air, water, weather, and human activity. My aim is to develop robust, open-source tools to predict the entire process of a landslide, from its initiation to its consequences, but it’s complicated. The physical models are computationally extensive, as they target very specific areas or types of soil or varieties of vegetation, such as trees versus shrubs, or wet sand versus clay. The idea is to combine these physics-based mathematical models with AI to eventually extrapolate that data and apply it more globally to larger areas. We want to make predicting landslides – and eventually other natural disasters – more global, more comprehensive, and faster, ideally to be used in real time that can inform and improve design standards and warning systems.
If we don’t create new guidelines to enhance the effectiveness of solutions for landslide prevention and community preparedness, we will see more deaths, more people affected, and more catastrophes. In mountainous regions, we will see more flash floods, roads washed away, and infrastructure destroyed, and unfortunately, the poorest populations, the communities with the least resources, will be most affected.
What misconceptions might the public hold and how can individuals do their part?
When something isn’t in your backyard, it’s hard to believe it could be a problem. Many people underestimate how intense rainfall can destabilize slopes, triggering landslides. The greatest obstacles are public awareness and integrating climate data into long-term planning for vulnerable areas. There is also the misconception that climate change mainly affects coastal communities. Hurricane Helene has shown that extreme weather events affect not only large coastal cities but also small, rural communities that often have limited resources. If a community is prepared, educated, and aware, the same catastrophe can have very different consequences.
How do we improve preparedness? First, through awareness and education. Second, through stakeholders and organizations who can improve guidelines and policies, especially in rural areas unaccustomed to extreme weather conditions. Finally, engineers and scientists need to further develop our predictive tools – climate models, construction and zoning practices for civil infrastructure, etc. – and preventative approaches. It is imperative to invest in research that will mitigate the impact of natural disasters in the face of climate change. Once experts establish those guidelines, they need to be implemented and well communicated to the public.
Christina DiMarino
Assistant Professor, electrical and computer engineering
Christina DiMarino works in power electronics, where she considers energy solutions in a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Her research addresses two questions: how can we power our devices more efficiently to reduce energy consumption and how do we do that with clean sources of energy? Seeking solutions to achieve net-zero carbon goals, she considers how to ubiquitously integrate renewable energy sources into the power grid and distribute that energy efficiently with new power conversion technologies. The exciting part of power electronics, DiMarino said, is that anything with electricity needs it, from your smartphones and laptops, to AI and high-performance computing, to electric vehicles and the power grid. In her words…
What’s the problem both locally and globally?
The problem with energy is one of supply and demand. Ultimately, it all comes back to efficient consumption of power and generating an ample energy supply. We have rapid change on both sides of the coin. Driven by projected increases in electric vehicles and data centers, demand for electricity in particular is expected to increase significantly. Electricity demand for data centers alone could increase by 160 percent over the next 10 years if AI takes off. To meet demand, we need to increase capacity (supply), preferably with clean energy sources, and develop solutions to power these technologies efficiently.
Locally, an estimated 70 percent of all internet traffic in the U.S. passes through Northern Virginia. That’s over 250+ data centers in the state where large computing needs are processed and telecommunications infrastructure is stored. How can we power those data centers more efficiently so the energy loss is reduced?
On the supply side, ideally we want to produce energy in a clean way, and power electronics are integral to incorporating those clean energy technologies. For instance, solar panels produce direct current (DC) electrical power, which needs to be converted to alternating current (AC) using power electronics (called a solar or PV inverter) to feed into our AC distribution system.
The U.S. power grid is 150 years old; it can be expanded to increase capacity, but it will struggle to handle renewables and electric vehicle fast-charging, as it was not meant to operate with those types of sources and loads. Power electronics is critical when it comes to integrating new clean energy technologies – wind, solar, etc. – into the electric grid and into this electricity ecosystem.
What does your research aim to solve and what might the consequences be if the problem is left unresolved?
I work on packaging for semiconductor devices. Semiconductors are a key component in power electronics that enable the electrical power conversion. The package is essential to the operation of these semiconductor devices, as it forms the electrical interconnections, dissipates the heat generated from power loss, and provides mechanical and environmental protection. Given the broad needs of the package, this research spans multiple science and engineering fields, and requires a multi-disciplinary approach to successfully package and integrate semiconductor devices with optimal performance.
My work aims to package and integrate advanced semiconductor devices and other power electronics components in ways that enable higher efficiency, smaller size and weight, increased power processing, and better reliability. We have worked on packages and integration techniques that reduce the size and weight of traction inverters for electric vehicles, which improve acceleration and driving range; that can enable power converters with the same form factor as high-voltage cables for seamless integration of power electronics (and hence renewable energy sources, energy storage, and electric vehicle charging stations) in the grid distribution network.
What misconceptions might the public hold and how can individuals do their part?
Overall, we don’t do a great job of communicating the power consumption in applications like the Cloud, or AI, which are very power intensive—a ChatGPT query is estimated to use nearly 10-times as much power as a Google search. To keep up with projected demand, there is a need to quickly scale up clean energy sources. Addressing energy challenges, especially given how increasingly reliant we are on it, is incredibly complex.
It’s not enough to just look at the carbon emissions of a product (e.g., a solar panel or electric vehicle) during its operational life. It is important to consider how the product was made and transported, and its end of life. For example, what kind of materials and processes were needed to create it, and what are the carbon emissions or other environmental indicators associated with those? If rare-earth metals were used, how does that impact the product’s full lifecycle environmental impact? Can the product be easily repaired, reused, or recycled to extend its useful life and mitigate waste? How does that influence the design of our products? Can we, in the design stage of our power electronics, be considering this full product lifecycle and circularity upfront?
Transforming the grid and moving towards greener sources of power is not just a technical challenge; it is a problem that involves many stakeholders and will require significant investment.
Jen Irish
Professor, civil and environmental engineering
Jen Irish is the program coordinator for Virginia Tech’s Environmental and Water Resources Engineering program; she studies coastal flooding and resilience. Using computational models and observations, Irish advances understanding of the physics of storm surge – the volume of ocean water a hurricane pushes ashore. These insights inform flood hazard mapping and preparedness for agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as well as flood risk assessment of homes, businesses, and coastal infrastructure like seawalls, levees, ports, and harbors. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, storm surge research by Irish and her colleagues influenced the National Hurricane Center to change its criteria when categorizing hurricanes, as the storm surge at the levees were greatly impacted by the storm size, not just the speed of the wind. When it comes to disaster resilience, however, Irish says we don’t necessarily need to achieve a millimeter of accuracy when modeling coastal hazards. In her words…
What’s the problem both locally and globally?
Coastal flooding directly impacts people – they lose their jobs, their homes, and sometimes even friends and family members. The toll that rebuilding or relocating takes on individuals and communities after severe water damage can’t be underestimated. Coastal flooding is caused by a confluence of factors: rising sea levels, hurricanes and tropical storms, climate change, and even activities like drilling for oil that change the ground beneath us and cause the earth to shift. While we know sea level rise is the biggest driver in flooding, predicting how much water will rise – and where and when – is difficult.
Coastal engineering has been around since the Roman Empire, when marble was used to hold back water in Venice, but now we also have extreme weather and aging infrastructure to account for. Every year the American Society of Civil Engineers puts a report out on civil infrastructure. The U.S. never does well, but we have lots of people living at the coast, and more people who want to live at the coast.
With climate change comes aberrant patterns that are causing floods and extreme conditions in places that haven’t seen flooding before, meaning history doesn’t necessarily reflect how an area will respond to flooding now or in the future. Two famous U.S. beaches – Waikiki and Miami – are engineered. Using a process called “beach nourishment” coastal engineers have carefully designed, imported, and distributed sand to absorb the impact of waves and receive the brunt of water as a first line of defense instead of the buildings on the coast. Unless we make investments in coastal resilience - such as fortifying seawalls - many areas will be increasingly vulnerable to these disasters in the future. Further, coastal zones have varied definitions, with some researchers categorizing a coastal area as being within 50 miles of the coast. Through that metric, 60 percent of people in Virginia technically live in a coastal area and could be impacted, but there’s less public awareness about coastal flooding for those without an ocean view.
What does your research aim to solve and what might the consequences be if the problem is left unresolved?
The research my team does with storm surge uses computational modeling to better predict flooding in specific areas. During a storm surge, the wind pushes on the water. That force – by Newton’s second law – converts to a change in the water level which rises as the storm approaches. Depending on the size and track of the hurricane, storm surge flooding can last for several hours to days. It then recedes after the storm passes, but water level heights during a hurricane can reach 20 feet or more above normal sea level. It’s hard to predict how waters might rise given many factors including the storm’s path, intensity, rainfall, and the coastal location’s characteristics.
A known problem Hurricane Harvey highlighted in 2017 was the confluence of the storm surge with precipitation. We don’t fully understand this “compound flooding” because we don’t fully understand how ocean storm surge and precipitation flooding interact. It’s hard to predict the amount of rain the hurricane will produce, and the effects are very localized. A challenge with this work is determining how variable a storm surge is – for example, with respect to height of water, force of water, and projected impact based on the terrain – even along a couple of miles of shore. As our models become more accurate, we can help with preparedness and evacuation protocols in the immediate area when disaster strikes, and hopefully have longer term plans and resources available beyond the immediately impacted area.
The idea of planned relocation is really scary to communities, but they’re actually trying this in Louisiana. Post-Hurricane Katrina, spontaneous relocation could be felt all over the country as displaced people sought new communities away from coastal hazards. We have to plan for even more relocations in the future, which not only uproot residents, but disrupt wildlife and impact the economy. A particularly frightening thought is having to force spontaneous exodus and relocate businesses on the coast before they’re completely destroyed, but beyond the emotional and financial devastation for individuals, communities, and businesses, there are national security implications. Nuclear power plants have to be near water sources for cooling purposes, and significant flooding could cause catastrophe.
What misconceptions might the public hold and how can individuals do their part?
We don’t realize how dependent we are on the coast. Nearly every household item comes through a port, and a huge percentage of energy comes from natural resources generated at the coast. Americans, as heavy consumers, need to invest in resources to restore aging coastal infrastructure, and elected officials have to be brave enough to allocate funds that will fortify communities. To be resilient, we can’t just build back the same as before. A thriving, reliable society may look very different from today’s set-up. We have limited finances and other resources, including a limited amount of sand.
Another misconception is that sea level rise is only climate oriented. In fact, there are large amounts of sea level change occurring entirely independent of climate, like ground settling subsidence due to anthropogenic activities around water and mineral extraction. Groundwater extraction and land sinking are main reasons we have some hotspots in Hampton Roads and in New Orleans. We're already experiencing large rates of sea level rise there without even seeing much of the climate effect yet.
We have to stop using natural disaster statistics in a way that soothes our conscience. For example, public opinion says if I have a 100 year floodplain, and endured a flood two years ago, I have 98 years to worry about the next flood. What it actually means is that there’s a one in 100 chance of a flood in any given year, which comes down to a 25 percent chance of flooding over a traditional mortgage life. If you’re in a 100-year flood zone, you have a one in four chance that your house is going to flood in 30 years. What worries me is this false sense of security. People get fatigued from evacuations, especially when the storm doesn’t turn out to be “so bad,” but a lot of places have just been lucky. If storms like Helene or Milton had shifted even a few miles, cities like Tampa could be devastated. There’s only so much luck.
Sheima Khatib
Associate professor, chemical engineering
Sheima Khatib uses her expertise to transform greenhouse gasses from an environmental burden into a useful asset. As part of a discipline that integrates chemistry with large-scale industrial processes, Khatib recognizes the crucial role chemical engineers play in implementing solutions that are both scientifically sound and industrially viable. Her background in process development and optimization, reactor engineering, and the design and implementation of sustainable catalytic processes, targets one pollutant in particular: methane. She is also teaching a course called “Energy and Climate Solutions”, preparing the next generation of Hokie engineers to claim their role in mitigating climate change. In her words…
What’s the problem both locally and globally?
Globally, the main challenge is the rising concentration of greenhouse gasses, which drive global temperature increases. While carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuel use are often in the spotlight, methane — the primary component of natural gas — is about 25 times more potent than CO₂ in trapping heat over a 100-year period. Significant methane emissions come from fossil fuel extraction, agriculture, landfills, biomass burning, and wastewater treatment. In the oil and gas industry, excess natural gas is often flared — burned off at drilling sites to convert methane to the less potent CO₂. However, flaring remains problematic, as it still contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Flaring is commonly practiced because capturing and transporting methane is often economically unfeasible, especially in areas lacking infrastructure.
Locally, Appalachia has vast natural gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale formations, and the challenge lies in managing emissions from natural gas extraction and processing, which can impact air quality and contribute to the region's carbon footprint. But imagine a chemical process that could convert this excess natural gas into useful products right at the source. Such a technology could not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also energize the local economy, fostering business innovation and positioning the region as a leader in clean energy.
What does your research aim to solve and what might the consequences be if the problem is left unresolved?
Our research group focuses on designing efficient catalysts to transform waste streams, such as excess natural gas, into valuable chemical products. To grasp catalysis, imagine you’re trying to lift a really heavy box, but it’s too hard to lift by yourself. Then, a friend comes along and helps you lift it more easily. Even though they don’t take the box from you, they make it lighter by using their strength to assist. In chemistry, a catalyst is like that friend. It helps make a reaction happen faster or with less energy, but it doesn’t get used up or changed in the process, just like your friend still has their strength afterward.
In our projects, we’re developing catalytic processes to convert methane from natural gas wells into valuable commercial chemicals, such as aromatics, which are industrial precursors for a wide range of chemicals such as pharmaceuticals, detergents, dyes, and plastics. We are also working on a reaction that converts methane to carbon nanotubes, and clean hydrogen, supporting the transition to a sustainable “hydrogen economy.” By transforming a potent greenhouse gas into less harmful, high-value products at the source, we aim to reduce methane emissions and turn an environmental burden into an economic asset. Our use of advanced catalysts allows these transformations to be efficient and environmentally conscious.
If we fail to address methane and CO₂ emissions, we risk exacerbating global warming significantly. Methane's high global warming potential means that even small leaks have a large impact on climate change. Addressing this issue is critical to meeting global climate targets and avoiding the most severe impacts of climate change and disruptions to ecosystems and agriculture.
What misconceptions might the public hold and how can individuals do their part?
A common misconception is that chemical engineering is often associated with pollution or environmental harm due to its connection with large-scale production. In reality, chemical engineers are dedicated to creating more efficient, sustainable, and environmentally friendly processes.
Chemical engineers are trained to understand both the environmental impact of industrial processes and the methods to mitigate them. They play a crucial role in advancing cleaner technologies, reducing waste, optimizing resource use, and minimizing emissions. While industrial processes can contribute to environmental contamination, chemical engineers are uniquely equipped to tackle these challenges and innovate solutions that make these processes safer and more sustainable.
To prepare the next generation of engineers to tackle our most pressing environmental challenges, I teach an undergraduate course called “Energy and Climate Solutions” that explores chemical engineering solutions, such as direct carbon capture, negative emissions technologies, the utilization of CO₂ as a feedstock, and electrochemical energy storage (batteries). My goal in this course is for students to understand the unique contributions they can make as chemical engineers while recognizing that complex environmental problems require a multidisciplinary approach.
The general public should advocate for and support research and policies that focus on capturing and utilizing greenhouse gas emissions. By supporting initiatives that convert greenhouse gasses into useful products, such as value-added chemicals and clean energy carriers such as hydrogen, we not only fight climate change, but also create economic opportunities from what is essentially a waste product.
If you want to have an impact on our students and faculty like those featured in this magazine, go here to support the College of Engineering. For more information, call (800) 533-1144.
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