Engineers for a Sustainable World Project Team

Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) is an engineering project team of approximately 60 members committed to forging innovative, lasting solutions for local and global sustainability challenges. Since its establishment in 2002 at Cornell, ESW has expanded to become an international, non-profit network with over 50 college, university, and city chapters with more than 4,000 student, faculty, and professional members. ESW Cornell is comprised of four major divisions: Operations, Resource Renewal and Outreach, Renewable Energy Solutions, and Carbon Neutrality.

Each division is composed of multiple subteams. The teams within the Operations division include Website Development, Social Media, and Alumni and Marketing. The Alumni and Marketing Team works to ensure positive alumni relations and increase ESW's presence on Cornell's campus. The Social Media sub-team is responsible for running all social media platforms for ESW Cornell, and the Website Development sub-team is responsible for updating and maintaining ESW Cornell's website.

The teams within the Resource Renewable and Outreach division include Business and Outreach, Design, and Research and Development. The Business and Outreach sub-team amplifies sustainability education through outreach into the local community and highlights the importance of business in engineering. The Design sub-team utilizes chemistry based experiments to design sustainable reactions and processes, such as carbon capture polymers. The primary goal of the Research and Development sub-team is to develop innovative micro-plastic capturing solutions to reduce micro-plastic contamination.

The Renewable Energy Solutions division is made up of the Hydroponics, Software Development, and Inclusive Innovation: Human Centered Design sub-teams. Hydroponics designs and builds hydroponics systems, conducting research across various fields. Software Development specializes in full-stack development projects aimed at enhancing sustainability within the Cornell community leveraging computer science expertise. The Inclusive Innovation subteam is part of a larger, worldwide initiative committed to addressing the needs of individuals with disabilities. This initiative unites individuals from diverse backgrounds to collaborate on the development of assistive and accessible technology solutions

Lastly, the Carbon Neutrality division includes the Building Retrofits, Business, Policy, and Analytics, Fume Hood Energy Dashboard, and Smart Controls subteams. Building Retrofits utilizes software to analyze energy usage across particular classrooms on Cornell’s campus and compares the data to previous reports. Business, Policy, and Analytics is working with Ithaca Bikeshare to evaluate the bike use by Cornell students and compile data to facilitate a partnership between Ithaca Bike Share and Cornell University. Fume Hood Energy Dashboard is creating a web dashboard that displays real-time energy usage of each fume hood on campus, which could be used to identify energy-intensive fume hoods and encourage labs to reduce energy use. Lastly, Smart Controls sub-team aims to reduce errors in Cornell's record of its campus energy consumption by detecting meter faults and anomalies and is currently creating anomaly algorithm libraries to provide as open source for customers to use.

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