Conference: Student and Junior Faculty Support for the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST) 2022

2224644 (Lu). The International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST) conference will engage participants from multiple disciplines to focus on sustainability and engineering challenges. This conference, to be held June 21-23, 2022 in Pittsburgh, PA, will address a spectrum of issues for assessing and managing products and services across their life cycle, as well as the design, management, and policy implications of sustainably engineered systems and technologies. ISSST 2022 will highlight five themes: (1) Integrated human-physical systems - how to integrate human dimensions into sustainability design and implementations; (2) Infrastructure sustainability and resiliency - quantitative assessment of the sustainability and resiliency of the built environment; (3) Advances in sustainability assessment methods - the development of new sustainability assessment methods, including data science and analytics, machine learning, multi-objective analyses, and other methods for emerging systems and technologies; (4) Sustainability education - pedagogical approaches to teaching sustainability at different levels and lessons learned in designing sustainability curriculum; and (5) Other creative sustainability-related topics - new methods and ideas that demonstrate unique partnerships, big ideas, perspectives from non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) disciplines. The conference will also host special sessions to bring participants together in educational sessions, workshops, communications, and professional skills development.

The conference is designed for significant participation from students and young faculty members, as this is critical for developing the next generation of sustainable solutions. This grant will help to expand the participation of students, underrepresented groups, and junior faculty from across the United States in ISSST 2022. Social equity, differential access and impacts, and environmental justice will be prominent across all of the five themes of the 2022 conference. Several sessions are also expected to address the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on production and consumption, pollution, and critical infrastructure systems. A diverse group of members will share their work in sustainability science and engineering through paper and poster presentations, as well as formal and informal discussions. The conference will also feature a variety of plenary/keynote speakers, including Dr. Aurora Sharrad, Director of Sustainability, from University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Ranran Wang from Leiden University, Netherlands. All of this will provide participants a venue for discussing visions, educational approaches, challenges, as well as provide educators and students opportunities to gain insight on research on sustainability in a holistic manner.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.