Dr. Greeshma Gadikota, Assistant Professor and Croll Sesquicentennial Fellow, in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell, has been awarded the prestigious NSF Early CAREER award for her project titled, "Confinement Induced Structural Evolution of Calcium- and Magnesium- Carbonates in Architected Siliceous Nanochannels."
Gadikota said, "Removing CO2 emissions at the scale of several gigatons from air and permanently storing these emissions is essential for a sustainable climate. CO2 storage as solid carbonates in earth abundant porous silica-rich geologic environments is a scalable approach. However, there is a limited understanding of how CO2 crystallizes in very small pores that are to the order of a few nanometers. Conventional crystallization mechanisms do not apply in these small environments. Natural materials are heterogeneous in their compositions and morphologies. By developing materials with controlled morphologies and compositions, we can develop calibrated insights into carbon transformations."
The NSF CAREER Award supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, as stated on the NSF website.
"We are excited that this project will create new knowledge of how inorganic carbonates crystallize in pores with sizes in the range of 2-20 nm. These fundamental insights will inform carbon transformations to enhance soil productivity, enable the sustainable recovery of metals and design of high strength building materials", said Gadikota.
Gadikota group's research is directed towards applications that involve advancing fundamental science and transformative technologies for sustainable energy and resource recovery with an emphasis on decarbonization and low carbon and negative emissions technologies.
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