EESS Seminar talk on "Agile benchmarking frameworks to prioritize technology development pathways for sustainable resource recovery"
Event details
| Date | 10.11.2026 |
| Hour | 12:15 › 13:15 |
| Speaker | Dr. Jeremy Guest, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract
Societies have prospered under a linear “take-make-use-dispose” paradigm, extracting natural resources to make products, using them, and ultimately discarding them or their residues. This model has driven economic growth but at the cost of resource depletion, pervasive pollution, biodiversity loss, and an escalating climate crisis. In response, industries and governments are seeking technologies that can meet societal needs while advancing broader sustainability goals – closing resource cycles, carbon neutrality, and equity among them. This pursuit has become a catalyst for research and development to support a transition toward a circular economy, but a critical challenge has been the vast landscape of possible technology development pathways and the lack of transparent, consistent frameworks to target research and investment.
This presentation will introduce our approach to prioritize research, development, and deployment (RD&D) pathways for emerging technologies to achieve a more sustainable and more circular economy. Using a structured methodology – quantitative sustainable design (QSD) – we integrate process design, simulation, techno-economic analysis (TEA), and life cycle assessment (LCA) under uncertainty to elucidate key drivers of system sustainability, to characterize performance gaps, and to optimize technology and system design. By simulating the deployment of new resource recovery technologies across many contexts, we identify combinations of locality-specific factors (i.e., typologies) that cause potential deployment scenarios to cluster together in terms of technology sustainability. Leveraging examples from our work in wastewater treatment and nutrient recovery, I will demonstrate how we simulate the scale-up of early-stage resource recovery technologies to guide their development and to identify contexts in which they have the greatest potential for impact. Finally, I will share lessons we have learned in making our computational tools open-source as we work to support an ecosystem of innovation in sustainable technology development.
Bio
Dr. Jeremy Guest is the Department Head and David C. Crawford Faculty Scholar in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He also holds an appointment (by courtesy) as a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
The core goal of Professor Guest’s research group is to advance circular bioeconomies for a more sustainable and just future. His team supports this vision by developing computational models to prioritize research, development, and deployment pathways for new technologies that achieve resource recovery from wastewaters and the conversion of plants to products, food, and fuels. Professor Guest’s formal training includes a B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering from Bucknell University and Virginia Tech, respectively, and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Michigan.
Societies have prospered under a linear “take-make-use-dispose” paradigm, extracting natural resources to make products, using them, and ultimately discarding them or their residues. This model has driven economic growth but at the cost of resource depletion, pervasive pollution, biodiversity loss, and an escalating climate crisis. In response, industries and governments are seeking technologies that can meet societal needs while advancing broader sustainability goals – closing resource cycles, carbon neutrality, and equity among them. This pursuit has become a catalyst for research and development to support a transition toward a circular economy, but a critical challenge has been the vast landscape of possible technology development pathways and the lack of transparent, consistent frameworks to target research and investment.
This presentation will introduce our approach to prioritize research, development, and deployment (RD&D) pathways for emerging technologies to achieve a more sustainable and more circular economy. Using a structured methodology – quantitative sustainable design (QSD) – we integrate process design, simulation, techno-economic analysis (TEA), and life cycle assessment (LCA) under uncertainty to elucidate key drivers of system sustainability, to characterize performance gaps, and to optimize technology and system design. By simulating the deployment of new resource recovery technologies across many contexts, we identify combinations of locality-specific factors (i.e., typologies) that cause potential deployment scenarios to cluster together in terms of technology sustainability. Leveraging examples from our work in wastewater treatment and nutrient recovery, I will demonstrate how we simulate the scale-up of early-stage resource recovery technologies to guide their development and to identify contexts in which they have the greatest potential for impact. Finally, I will share lessons we have learned in making our computational tools open-source as we work to support an ecosystem of innovation in sustainable technology development.
Bio
Dr. Jeremy Guest is the Department Head and David C. Crawford Faculty Scholar in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He also holds an appointment (by courtesy) as a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
The core goal of Professor Guest’s research group is to advance circular bioeconomies for a more sustainable and just future. His team supports this vision by developing computational models to prioritize research, development, and deployment pathways for new technologies that achieve resource recovery from wastewaters and the conversion of plants to products, food, and fuels. Professor Guest’s formal training includes a B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering from Bucknell University and Virginia Tech, respectively, and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Michigan.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- EESS - IIE
Contact
- Prof. Wenyu Gu, MICROBE