Battle of the Labs: The Science of a Resource Revolution
While California band The Americans rocked the Library, Battery Powered members were cheering on a different kind of show just down the hall. The first ever Battle of the Labs invited six top university laboratories to battle it out on stage for the most innovative technologies to put California at the cutting edge of a resource revolution. The leading lab, after a vote at the end of the night, has been invited to join the Resource Revolution finalist organizations, each of which is eligible for Battery Powered funding of up to $300,000.
Here are the six Battle of the Labs contestants:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Project: Urban Energy Systems & Water Initiative
Stanford University Precourt Institute for Energy
Project: The Energy Transformation Collaborative: Enabling Innovation in California and Beyond
Transportation Sustainability Research Center (UC Berkeley)
Project: XBOS-V: Open-Source Software Platform For Electric Vehicle Smart Charging
UC Davis World Food Center
Project: Lowering the Environmental Footprint of Food
Kisailus Biomimetics and Nanostructured Materials Lab at UC Riverside
Project: From Nature to Engineering, and Back!
University of California Blum Center Network
Project: Innovating at the intersection of food, energy, and water
About the Battle
Stefan Heck, co-author of Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century—prefaced the Battle with key insights into the way we use our food, water and energy resources every day in the Golden State. Heck opened the floor for innovations that could address the 60% of our energy that currently goes to waste, or the 95% of time that our cars spend parked and out of use. Beyond that, he called for large-scale changes in how we understand and commodify natural resources, so that one day they could be valued for their worth rather than their delivery.
Researchers from across the state answered that call in a series of rapid-fire presentations on their biggest and boldest ideas. Solutions ranged from adaptive irrigation technology to produce exponentially better crop yields and save energy, to a low-cost system to purify arsenic-contaminated water in communities in Bangladesh and right here in California’s central valley.
One project caught the curiosity of the members and challenged the status quo of industrial engineering today. The UC Riverside Biomimetics and Nanostructured Materials Lab earned its spot as a finalist for this theme. The presentation, “From Nature to Engineering, and Back!” showed us how we can take inspiration from the biology of a deep-sea crustacean—the rainbow-colored mantis shrimp—to create stronger and more flexible building materials that could both save energy and diminish harmful fossil fuel emissions.
Graduate student researcher Nicholas Yaraghi is part of a team working to develop “bio-inspired” synthetic processes for energy storage and conversion (like batteries) and high-performance composite materials (the stuff used to make cars, airplanes and buildings). The lightweight, impact-resistant materials can be synthesized using the mantis shrimp’s tough exterior as a blueprint. In the first control test, the new synthetic materials outperformed Boeing’s 787 aircraft build.
Yaraghi’s work takes inspiration from the natural world to create something entirely new, showcasing exciting possibilities for California-led innovations in natural resource management.
On June 9th, the Resource Revolution continues with Allocation Night, where UC Riverside and the other 19 finalists will be entered into the running for Battery Powered Awards. See the full list here: https://www.thebatterysf.com/batterypowered/givingtheme/resource-revolution/projects