Civil and Environmental Engineering/McCormick
Kimberly Gray is a Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. Her research is focused on environmental catalysis and physicochemical processes in natural and engineered environmental systems. In collaboration with materials scientists at Northwestern and chemists at Argonne National Laboratory, her lab is investigating the structure and function of photoactive materials, with long term potential for applications in renewable energy, water recycling, and air quality control. Kimberly’s group is also investigating fate of chemicals in natural systems. Application of this research is important in efforts to restore critical ecosystems, such as the Great Lakes, and to mimic ecosystem functions, such as wetlands for environmental protection. In addition to her research, Kimberly teaches courses that address broader concepts of sustainability, in the context of engineering and chemistry. She has worked extensively with the Chicago Legal Clinic to find equitable solutions to many environmental problems faced by low income Chicago communities. She also organized the Green City Summer Institute, an annual offering of the School of Continuing Studies, that taught students about Chicago’s sustainable past, present, and future. She was a 2008 Aldo Leopold Fellow and is currently the Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer on Energy, Environmental and Sustainability.
What does sustainability mean to you? I use a rather simple definition for sustainability – it is the universal goal of all living entities, be it a simple microbial consortium or a multinational corporation, and that goal is to thrive and prosper, indefinitely. Recently, I have distilled this even more to an elementary formula: energy + environment = sustainability, which is to say that if we were to calculate the environmental and ecological costs associated with our energy use, we would probably make many more sustainable choices.
How does your research/professional work connect to sustainability? How (or why) did you get involved? Every problem I tackle begins with the environment. I may end up pursuing more fundamental than practical directions, but my work is always linked to a real environmental problem. For instance, I study chemical reactions that can be driven by light through the use of a catalyst. For a long time I worked on the photocatalytic destruction of contaminants, until one day (about 5 years ago) we stumbled on the observation that we could reduce CO2 with our catalyst. No one really believed us at first, but we have attracted a huge amount of interest (and funding) in the last year. This work is a version of artificial photosynthesis and presents some very interesting questions for chemistry. I am not really sure how practical it is, but I think this type of work has us headed in the right direction. As an environmental engineer, most of the technology I work on is an effort to copy nature, or to discover how nature works. To me the basic principle of sustainability is to mimic nature.
What role do you see for universities (broadly) in advancing sustainable practices? Universities play a critical role in advancing sustainable practices because they are centers of innovation and critical thinking. First, I believe that societies must be convinced that there is an imperative that drives the change to sustainable practices and then, we need to be able to measure how one choice is more sustainable than another. Both of these tasks require education and research. I hear again and again from students that sustainability is not sufficiently woven into their classes and that it remains an elective topic taken somewhere late in their curriculum. To achieve sustainability we are going to have to make major changes in how we teach science, social science and engineering.
How can the university setting contribute practical, near-term solutions to the urgent and immediate needs for sustainability? I can think of 2 ways right off the bat – for one, many universities are walkable communities. Students probably live in a more sustainable way than at any other time of their lives. Secondly, at universities we analyze the choices societies make and we question business as usual practices. Our thinking is not necessarily bound by short-term, bottom line considerations. We are encouraged to think outside the box, or as Amory Lovins says, “What box?” In this way innovation is fostered and solutions found.
What do you see as the key step or steps to achieving sustainability? I am a member of a Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and I believe that rethinking the design of almost every aspect of urban development is essential to achieve sustainability – material use, building design, settlement patterns, transportation systems, energy source, ecological connections, water cycles, etc.
If you could have one sustainability wish come true, what would it be? That the U.S. would implement a carbon tax and that this would stimulate real and lasting progress in developing solar and wind energy production.
What’s your favorite sustainable product? I really like the notion of a “negawat” and think a lot could be accomplished in the short-term by conservation efforts. I also prefer glass over plastic, Styrofoam, or paper. And a bicycle is wonderful alternative to the automobile – In fact, in the last week, I have only driven 3 times – granted I didn’t have many pressing obligations.
What is your environmental vice?I have a strong preference for European cars, which in the U.S. is a vice. Moreover, while we live within walking distance to most of our activities, I drive way too much. I also could take mass transit to most destinations, but I usually fail to allocate sufficient time. But, on the positive side, we have scaled back to function as a single car family.
