Emma Strubell
Carnegie Mellon University, PA·Computer Science
Computing's appetite for energy is growing faster than the world is building new power — including renewable power. At the same time, the applications pushing hardest on computers, such as capable artificial intelligence, immersive virtual reality and networks of always-on sensors, demand ever more performance.
- Fields
Computer Science
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
sustainable computing
carbon footprint
embodied carbon
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Develop transparent and accurate carbon accounting for computing, including standardized protocols for measuring and reporting emissions and methods to reconcile inconsistent estimates and broad error margins across hardware lifecycles.
- Reduce embodied carbon — the emissions from manufacturing, transporting and disposing of hardware — by targeting semiconductor chip production and by developing advanced hardware recycling and disposal strategies.
- Cut operational carbon at datacenter scale through energy-efficient hardware design and intelligent use of renewable energy, aiming at a 45% reduction in computing's carbon footprint within a decade.
- Coordinate system design and management so artificial intelligence and virtual reality workloads can be served sustainably, making explicit trade-offs where embodied and operational carbon cannot be lowered at the same time.
- Build an interdisciplinary sustainable-computing community through a regional workshop, seminar series, curricula, and an academic–industry consortium spanning computer science, electrical engineering, environmental science and energy policy.
More about the research
Carbon Connect is a five-year, multi-institution Expedition that treats the carbon footprint of computing as a design problem spanning the whole stack, from individual semiconductor chips to warehouse-scale datacenters.
Why it matters
Datacenters and chip factories are a fast-growing source of emissions, and today there is no agreed way to even measure a computer system's carbon footprint reliably. Standardized carbon accounting plus concrete reduction techniques could let cloud providers, chip makers and regulators compare options honestly, and the project's accounting work is intended to inform future energy policy and legislation.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yu David Liu
Binghamton University, NY·Computer Science
Develop an operating system principle that continuously measures, tracks and rewards the sustainability impact of software activity on smartphones.
Stephen Lee
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Computer Science
Test whether inexpensive off-the-shelf sensors placed by residents can pinpoint where a specific home loses energy, without professional audit equipment.
Yong Chen
Texas Tech University, TX·Computer Science
Build and operate a renewable-energy-powered high-performance computing facility, and study the design tradeoffs and barriers of running large-scale scientific computing on variable renewable power.
The school
Carnegie Mellon University: 28 labs on PI Pages, $505M a year on research, 346 research doctorates a year.
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