Awards & Honors

With the support of a CUNY Climate Crisis Research Grant, Spitzer’s Professor Mohammad Bolhassani and Moni Chauhan of the chemistry department at Queensborough Community College are developing their idea for a zero-carbon, 3D-printable “soil cement” that could drastically reduce CO2 emissions and, they hope, revolutionize the construction industry. “Forty percent of global energy consumption and 38 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are directly associated with construction and building materials and technology in developed countries,” they write. Geopolymer concrete, which is produced with inorganic molecules, could be an alternative if not for its detrimental interactions with reinforcement material. Bolhassani and Chauhan have developed a new method that eliminates the need for reinforcement, yielding zero-carbon construction material.

 

Read more about this project here.

 

This project is one of 21 selected for funding through CUNY’s new Interdisciplinary Climate Crisis Research Grant program, which supports  faculty teams seeking seed grants for climate-focused research with the potential for expansion and larger-scale funding from outside sources. Funding comes from the Office of Research, the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC), and PowerBridgeNY, a state-funded program to move clean-tech innovations from academic research labs to the marketplace.