Developing Electronic Sensors for Environmental Science

Join us at 9:05 AM in RUCH 103 for a presentation from Carol Baumbauer, the first of three research presentations in our seminar series.

Data about soils, ecosystems, waterways, and the atmosphere is critical for understanding and mitigating climate change, managing resources and food production. Natural systems are complex with significant temporal and spatial variation, so high-density networks of low-cost sensors are needed to map this variability. Carol will describe her current work developing a system of in-soil sensors which monitor factors that lead to nitrous oxide emissions. Nitrous oxide is a potent yet understudied greenhouse gas. It is emitted by soils and is driven by other soil factors such as nitrate, ammonium, pH, moisture, oxygen, microbial activity, and temperature. Sensors for these attributes are fabricated using solution processing which could scale mass manufacturing techniques. Building on these environmental sensors, Carol will describe her vision for a research group that develops low cost sensors for direct greenhouse gas measurements as well as factors that drive gas emissions and consumption.

Speaker Bio
Carol is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her BS in EE from Montana State University in 2017. Her undergraduate research focused on nanofabrication and optics. She earned her MS in 2019 and PhD in 2022 from UC Berkeley. Her PhD work incorporated printed electronics, wireless communication, biodegradable materials, electrochemistry and agronomy to create a network of biodegradable nitrate sensors for fertilizer management.