The last few months has been a bit of a whirlwind! In late March, I finished the first draft of my nearly 400 page thesis, a culmination of the research I had been contributing to and leading for the past 4 years at University of Pennsylvania! It featured two review papers, on focused on industrial decarbonization opportunities in heavy industries, namely cement, lime, glass, and steelmaking, and the other a review of different carbon dioxide removal approaches. The other chapters featured some of my recent projects, including the development of flexible carbon capture on natural gas combined cycle power plants and integrating geothermal energy with direct air carbon capture systems.
The last chapter was one of my personal favorites, recounting my enriching experience of conducting engineering research in concert with frontline community engagement and contribution, highlighting that technologists and communities do not always have to exist at odds with each other.
On April 12th, I was pleased to welcome friends and family to Philadelphia, where they were able to attend my PhD dissertation defense. For those of you that may not know about these presentations, they are an overview of everything a PhD candidate has done over the span of their degree, all in ~45 minutes… All this led up to my graduation from University of Pennsylvania in May 2024!
Since then, I’ve taken a brief break, but recently returned to the Clean Energy Conversions Lab as a postdoctoral researcher, where I have been furthering some of the geothermal-DAC research I was conducting during my PhD, while also starting to develop the CCS Ladder for industrial decarbonization and exploring ways to make climate change mitigation curriculum more accessible in the Global South.
Max Pisciotta 