We invite you to a free, interdisciplinary conference of presentations and discussions on "Sustainable Science Communication" May 13 and 14, 2015. The event begins with the new documentary Merchants of Doubt and audience discussion beginning at 7 pm May 13 in the elegant Pollock Theater.

With ambitious new “renewable portfolio standards” of 50% in California by 2030 and for 20% of electricity for the entire United States by 2030, both excluding hydroelectric, the power grid faces dramatic challenges in absorbing higher levels of variability, whilst continuing to deliver reliable, cheap energy.  And with the DOE’s recent Wind Power vision indicates a 35% national RPS from wind is possible by 2050, the challenge continues beyond these nearer term goals.

A small, covert team of engineers at Microsoft turned one of the largest corporate campuses in the world into a “smart campus” achieving energy and operational savings. By applying an “Internet of Things meets Big Data” approach, the team refined a data-driven software solution that is slashing the cost of operating the campus’ 125 buildings. The software, which is saving Microsoft millions of dollars, has been so successful that the company and its partners are now helping building managers across the world deploy the same solution.

Printed organic electronics, a technology based on carbon-based semiconductors that can be processed into thin films using conventional coating and printing techniques, has been the subject of active research over the past decades. Due to their ability to be processed at low temperature, over large areas, at low cost, carbon-based semiconductors can lead to a new generation of energy-efficient products using energy-efficient manufacturing approaches.

The need for improving security standards for electric power systems is well recognized.  Such efforts however, are hindered by lack of decision support tools that can incorporate security into the decision making process. The current practice is to protect the system against known or anticipated failures either by using a post-processing phase or by explicit enumeration of the known cases.

In the past decade, polymers and small molecule thin films have found use in organic electronics as organic FETs (OFETS), photovoltaics (OPV) and LEDs (OLEDS). The way the organic molecules pack and the nanoscale morphology of these films (which is often different than in bulk) have a strong impact on the film functionality. To determine this structure and relate this to the film functionality, we have used grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) and small X-ray angle scattering (SAXS).

Replacing fossil energy with renewables requires improved technology for energy storage.

JPL and UCLA have recently explored several types of data-link based on the concept of signal backscattering and reflection. A reflection based link illuminates a mobile device who modules the reflection back to the base-station. The reflection-based link concept evolved out of JPL and UCLA’s work on reflect arrays for planetary science instruments as a means to achieve beam-steering and forming. In this talk we will look at the basic operation of reflective links as well as many of the technical obstacles related to the nature of reflection (in band blocking and ambient blocking).

To meet the ever growing demands of Internet services and cloud computing, the data center industry is experiencing rapid expansion. Data centers consume billions of KWh electricity every year, and each can take hundreds of million dollars to build. Most data centers are conservatively provisioned and operated to achieve high reliability, resulting in wasted resources and high cost. In this talk, we take a holistic view of data centers and discuss opportunities and our experiences.

I will describe the key features of the Initiative launched by President Janet Napolitano to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2025 at all 10 campuses of the UC System. The unprecedented scale and scope of this ambitious project presents some unique challenges and opportunities both for operations and for research, which I will describe and place into the context of current and future trends of energy efficiency, renewables and alternative energy technologies, as well as related economic and policy issues.