Current research programs

Research program:
Circular Economy in the Chemical and Materials Industry

The current consumer economy operates on a linear model of extract-produce-consume-throw away. This yields an economy whose negative externalities grow as demand grows. Circular Economy aims to reduce, reuse, and recycle materials in order to ensure more value is extracted from our use of natural resources. The goal of this research program is to develop innovation roadmaps for the chemical and materials industry that facilitate transitioning to a circular economy.

Research project 1:
Innovation Roadmaps for Circular Plastics

Research project 2:
Circular Chemical Value Chain Design

Research project 3:
Transitioning of Chemical and Materials Industry to Sustainable Circular Enterprise

Bhavik R. Bakshi

Professor

bakshi.2@osu.edu

Bhavik Bakshi is the Richard M. Morrow Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The Ohio State University, and the Director of the SE³RG (Sustainable Engineering-Ecosystem-Economic Research Group). He is also on the Faculty Advisory Board of OSU’s Sustainability Institute. 

Research program:
Social Value of Innovation and Business for a KAITEKI Future

This research program aims to generate insights about social values in order to help companies orient their innovation and growth to what people will care about in the future. Our motivation is to create knowledge and tools for innovation in science and technology that contributes lasting value to society, as publics, governments, and businesses have increasingly signaled that market success and profit are no longer sufficient for differentiation and success in our global marketplace.

Research project 1:
Social Value for a KAITEKI Future

Research project 2:
Future Social Values in the Smart Environments of 2050

Research project 3:
Future Social Value Toolkit

Research project 4:
Future Social Value Observatory

Research program:
Sustainable Food Systems

This research program focuses its activities at the intersections of health, sustainability, and well-being. It aims to bind the spirit of KAITEKI with real-world food systems issues that affect consumers’ health and lives. As such, the research team advances work along its main areas of interest: (a) consumer level food waste, (b) dietary shifts towards plant-based diets, and (c) COVID-19 and its impact on both food waste and health behaviors.

Research project 1:
Food Waste Reduction

Research project 2:
Dietary Shifts and Well-being for a KAITEKI Future

Research project 3:
Impacts of COVID-19 on Health and Sustainability Behaviors

Research program:
Design, Development and Testing of Innovative Materials for Urban Cooling

To promote advanced technologies to mitigate urban heat island and to simulate impact of infrastructure materials, an integrated study of the design, development and testing of innovative materials for urban cooling was undertaken within the scope of this research program, which includes the following: (a) development and use of computer simulations of urban buildings and urban centers, and (b) a novel approach to asphalt pavement formulation to promote a more durable material with improved thermal properties.

Research project 1:
Modeling and Simulation of Building Materials and Urban Climate

Research project 2:
Innovative Design of Paving Materials using Aerogel Composite (aMBx)

Research program:
Climate Change as a Waste Management Challenge

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, CO₂ from fossil sources has been dumped into the air, raising its concentration from 280 ppm to 415 ppm. The rise in CO₂ (2.5 ppm/yr) is still accelerating, even though COVID-19 caused a temporary slowdown. Roughly half of the CO₂ persists for centuries in the air making it necessary to limit aggregate emissions rather than the rate of emission. Seamless scientific evidence clearly shows that limiting global warming to 2 °C cannot be achieved without negative emissions. Transforming the world’s energy infrastructure and creating such negative emissions at the necessary scale (on the order of 20 to 40 Gt CO₂ per year) requires more than new technologies; it requires social innovation to create a framework that allows and motivates the rapid introduction of new technology, fairly distributes the burden between developed and developing countries, between the present and future generations, and between rich and poor.  Our goal is to analyze the strength and weaknesses of a shift to a paradigm that treats CO₂ emissions as a waste management problem and to expose stakeholders to this idea. Different groups of climate change stakeholders find a waste management approach more appealing since it cuts through some of the complexity of dealing with carbon dioxide emissions. This approach opens door to a wide range of technological solutions that would be overlooked in the traditional framework of treating carbon as pollution. 

Research project 1:
CO2: waste or pollutant?

Research project 2:
Certificates of sequestration

Research project 3:
Closing the carbon loop