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Nanotechnology for a Sustainable Environment: The Legacy of Joel Pedersen

04/02/2025 10:12:17 AM

Apr2

On Sunday morning, January 23, Temple Beth El welcomed Dr. Robert Hamers to give the Joel Pedersen Lecture on Tikkun Olam and the Environment. Dr. Hamers is a professor of chemistry and director of the Center for Sustainable Technology at UW–Madison. His talk focused on how nanomaterials can mitigate the effects of global climate change on food production and help us advance toward sustainable agriculture. The slides from Dr. Hamers’s talk are posted on the members only page of our website.

Nanomaterials are materials with a dimension of <100 nanometers (less than 1/1000 of the width of a human hair) that are used in biomedical equipment, batteries, paints, computers, and many other products. Their unique properties allow them to interact with organic materials in useful and environmentally beneficial ways. For instance, nanotechnology holds great promise for food production in terms of soil fertility, disease resistance, and minimizing chemical use.

However, like many technologies, use of nanotechnologies may also cause unintended negative effects. Dr. Hamers said that chemists have the responsibility to society to examine nanomaterial interactions with biological and environmental systems before they become widely distributed and to propose rules for their use. Together with the late Joel Pedersen and another colleague, he worked to create the Center for Sustainable Technology to explore how nanotechnologies can come to fruition with little or no negative environmental impact. This work is currently supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

April 30, 2025 2 Iyar 5785