Gregory V. Lowry - US grants

Safe treatment and storage of high volume industrial waste streams pose unique waste management challenges. Land disposal of these materials often has negative environmental impacts such as contamination of soil and groundwater, and consumes vast areas of land. Bauxite residue (Red Mud) from aluminum production, fly ash from coal combustion, and waste water treatment plant (WWTP) biosolids are three examples of high volume waste streams. Approximately 3 million tons of Red Mud are produced in the U.S. each year (30 M/yr globally), and are disposed in land-based impoundment reservoirs. Approximately 63 million and 7 million tons of fly ash and biosolids are generated annually in the U.S., respectively, much of which is disposed of in landfills. Another high volume (Gigatons/yr) waste stream with serious environmental impacts is CO2. Safe disposal of these wastes are a requisite. New methods for sustainable management and ways to find beneficial use for these wastes are highly desirable. Red Mud is usually managed by discharge into engineered or natural impoundment reservoirs, with subsequent dewatering by gravity consolidation and sometimes with capping for closure. Revegetation of dewatered Red Mud is not possible without addition of amendments because of the high pH, high salinity, and absence of nutrients and organic constituents.
This proposal investigates the potential of using high volume waste materials, specifically CO2 and acidic fly ash, to neutralize Red Mud for the purpose of soil building and revegetation. The potential of Red Mud to safely sequester CO2 will also be determined. Bench scale batch experiments will be used to evaluate the rate and extent of Red Mud neutralization by contacting with dilute carbon dioxide waste streams, and by addition of acidic fly ash. The properties of the resulting mixture will be evaluated including pH, heavy metal leaching potential, carbonate mineral content, texture, bulk density, and water holding capacity. The additional neutralization capacity and reduction in heavy metal leaching afforded by WWTP biosolids, a common organic soil amendment needed to aid revegetation of surficial neutralized Red Mud, will also be determined. Various Red Mud to ash ratios, CO2 concentrations, and organic amendment concentrations will be used to determine which ratio provides optimal soil properties for revegetation. Lastly, engineering schemes to implement this technology will be evaluated for a possible Phase II field demonstration.
Expected benefits and broader impacts. This project will provide new methods for neutralizing Red Mud, a high volume, highly alkaline residue from bauxite mining, with other high volume waste materials (CO2, acidic fly ash, biosolids). Treatment of Red Mud will make possible revegetation and environmental restoration of the large Red Mud disposal areas in the U.S. and elsewhere. The beneficial use of CO2, fly ash, and biosolids for this purpose will lower the environment impact of several industries. The potential exists to use millions of tons of CO2 or fly ash in Red Mud neutralization rather than emission to the atmosphere or disposal in a landfill, respectively. As much as 785% of the annual CO2 emissions from aluminum smelting can potentially be sequestered in the process of neutralizing Red Mud currently in storage. This project will also provide unique training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students in the area of sustainable environmental management.

ABSTTACT - 0521721
Carnegie Mellon University

Intellectual Merit. Organic contamination of subsurface soil and groundwater is an extensive and vexing environmental problem that stands to benefit from nanotechnology. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that contamination by organic pollutants, especially chlorinated volatile organic compounds, are primary concerns at over half of the Superfund National Priorities List sites [Common Chemicals Found at Superfund Sites, U.S. E.P.A., 2003]. Health risks associated with these compounds have led to an extensive, but relatively unsuccessful, remediation effort for the past 30 years. The limited success of past remediation efforts is primarily because most organic pollutants have limited solubility in water and tend to remain as a separate non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) in the subsurface. Residual NAPL pools act as long-term sources for contaminant leaching to the groundwater, resulting in large plumes of dissolved contaminants and very long remediation times.

Prior research indicates that suspended iron nanoparticles react with NAPLs to convert them to non-toxic products. The major goal of this proposal is to develop and optimize polymer assemblies that preferentially target iron-containing nanoparticles to the NAPL-water interface, so the remediation activity can be concentrated at the NAPL source. The research focuses on the interfacial behaviors that are required to successfully develop a targeted nanoparticle delivery system. The polymers are designed to be multifunctional - they disperse the iron nanoparticles into water for good aqueous transportability through porous media, minimize undesirable adsorption to mineral and natural organic matter (NOM) surfaces, and preferentially anchor nanoparticles to accumulate at the NAPL/water interface. Experimental metrics include the polymers' effects on colloidal stability, transport through porous sand columns, adsorption to model mineral and NOM surfaces, and partitioning to the NAPL/water interface. The composition and architecture of the block copolymers will be systematically varied. Use of controlled radical polymerization schemes will provide tight control over block lengths. Finally, two modes of polymer attachment to the nanoparticle will be compared - physisorption of soluble block copolymers and block copolymer grafting from nanoparticle surfaces.

Broader Impact. Several decades are typically required to reach NAPL cleanup targets using the prevailing "pump-and-treat" technologies, because they address primarily the NAPL plume, not the source. Accordingly, the Department of Energy currently advocates the development of novel in situ technologies to remediate its contaminated sites [Guidance for Optimizing Ground Water Response Actions at Department of Energy Sites, U.S. D.O.E. Office of Environmental Management, 2002]. The proposed nanoparticle system is envisioned as the basis for a new in situ remediation technology with the potential to accelerate cleanup by directly targeting remediation action to the source, rather than the plume.

One Ph.D. student will receive research training through this grant. Further educational
benefits will accrue through the involvement of undergraduate students in the conduct of the research, especially by leveraging Carnegie Mellon's Summer Institute for Minority
Undergraduate Students. Participating students and faculty will prepare hands-on "smart
polymer" and "nanotechnology in the environment" modules for Carnegie Mellon's Engineering Your Future program that increases technology awareness among female high school students in the Pittsburgh area.

0608646
Tilton
This project focuses on developing polymer-coated iron nanoparticles and targeting delivery to the interface of water/non-aqueous phase liquids to provide more efficient remediation of ground-water contaminated by chlorinated organic compounds, in particular trichloroethylene and related compounds. The project will (i) design "block copolymers" that will maximize accumulation of nano-iron particles in the source zone of such contaminated aquifers, (ii) refine polymer design to achieve maximum dechlorination kinetics, and (iii) incorporate microbial interactions. The approach involves innovative combinations of colloidal phenomena, polymer synthesis and transport in porous media, some of which are derived from the area of targeted drug delivery. The broader impacts component of the project is strong. The research has broad societal implications; contamination by TCE of ground-water aquifers that potentially serve as drinking water supplies is an important public health issue. The project has a plan to integrate the research with interdisciplinary educational activities, including a multi-disciplinary course and K-12 outreach activities.

This Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering program entitled "Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Program in Nanotechnology (IUPN)", at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is under the direction of Dr. Michael Bockstaller, Center for Nano-Enabled Device and Energy Technologies, in collaboration with faculty from the departments of Physics, Chemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Philosophy. The primary goal of IUPN is to establish an integrated training program for undergraduate students in nanotechnology building on four existing courses and innovative mini-courses that will attract and engage talented students from multiple departments to the study of nanoscience and engineering. The proposed program will deliver a model for future undergraduate education in nanotechnology in which the focus is on the relevance of the connections among the traditional disciplines and a holistic view of 'sustainable nanotechnology' by integrating ethical and social science into the nanotechnology curriculum.

This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award creates a new interdisciplinary graduate training program whose focus is nanotechnology, its environmental effects, and policy at Carnegie Mellon and Howard University, in collaboration with the Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology.

This program will operate at the interface of science and environmental policy and will produce an environmentally- and policy-literate generation of nanoscience professionals with the skills needed to assess and manage environmental risks associated with nanomaterials. The program's goal is to foster the creation of knowledge and the exchange of ideas within an innovative and stimulating educational experience that will advance not only our knowledge of nanoparticles in the environment but also our understanding of how best to avoid their potential negative consequences. Broader impacts include the training of interdisciplinary Ph.D.-level scientists and engineers who, in addition to receiving rigorous scientific training, will have an understanding of the principles of good environmental stewardship, societal concerns as they relate to nanotechnology, and will be prepared to take leadership roles in dealing with environmental risk. Graduate students from multiple disciplines will participate in this two-year training program where they will learn the fundamentals of their core discipline and gain proficiency in the analysis of environmental issues pertaining to nanotechnology, decision science, and policy analysis, in new nanotechnology-themed courses. To promote interdisciplinary research students will be advised by at least two faculty members from different academic disciplines and will participate in laboratory exchanges with international partners.

IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Nanotechnology will play a key role in achieving sustainability in the global society. However, nanotechnology must itself be integrated into these solutions in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner, and with full public awareness and acceptance. Many existing nanotechnologies are currently not sustainable due to their dependence on large quantities of energy, water, and solvents, the use of non-renewable resources to develop them, or unwanted environmental impacts. The 2015 Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization (SNO) conference program will address these critical aspects of sustainable nanotechnology. The program will be built around selected important systems including agricultural, environmental. health, and energy systems. The systems focus for the meeting brings together researchers from different disciplines studying fate, effects, lifecycle assessment, and analytical challenges in a particular system (e.g. water) into the same sessions to cross-fertilize ideas between them. This is a different approach from most meetings which have separate sessions on these topics, irrespective of the system of interest. The aim of this organization is to provide researchers in a specific system the tools needed to understand how their work fits into achieving sustainability in the larger integrated system. Additional cross-cutting sessions will include manufacturing and industrial ecology, solid waste and e-waste reduction and recycling, modeling, data management, standardization of methods and data reporting, and legal and regulatory aspects. The conference will also better engage health professionals researching and testing novel nanomedicines. Three forum discussions will be: sustainability, nanoinformatics including data reporting and standardization,

The SNO Conference will draw attention to the role of nanomaterials in achieving integrated systems-level sustainable solutions to society's most pressing problems including natural limited resources, greenhouse gas releases, access to clean water and food, and environmental degradation. Societal issues will be addressed in sessions on Education and Social Systems/Governance. It is anticipated that 250 participants from industry, government, academia, and NGO stakeholders will participate. The conference will attract the leading interdisciplinary scientists and will include at least 30 participants who are junior scholars (doctoral and postdoctoral students), with 20 student travel awards (5 specifically for URM students) available to encourage their participation. Thus, the conference will provide networking opportunities for scientists at different career stages. The two and half day schedule will include a number of forum discussions that will foster interactions between young investigators and more established researchers. The SNO Conference is of particular importance to new investigators as there are few if any similar conferences that address the broad topic of Sustainable Nanotechnology. In addition, scientists from underrepresented groups in science will play key roles in the conference. Specific travel awards are available for these faculty and industry participants. Participants will come from not only the U.S., but around the globe, ensuring a diverse and international expert group to facilitate stimulating discussions.

1541807
Lowry

With ever increasing global demands for food, water, and energy, there is a critical need in the U.S. to identify sustainable solutions for simultaneously achieving energy, water, and food security. Agriculture accounts for approximately 70 % of all freshwater use, and 10 % of energy consumption, globally. Therefore, the agroecosystem lies at the heart of the energy-water-food nexus, and systems-level improvements in performance offers one of the greatest opportunities towards energy, water, and food security. Recent advances in nanoscale science and engineering offer unprecedented opportunity to reduce the energy and water inputs for food production, and to provide cost-effective, water and energy conservative technologies for reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture.

The PIs propose to convene a multidisciplinary group of faculty, students, and researchers from the USDA and the nanotechnology and agrochemical industries in a 2-day workshop in Pittsburgh, PA to identify the most promising groundbreaking opportunities for nanotechnology to increase sustainability at the food-water-energy nexus, and to identify the most pressing scientific, engineering, and social challenges that must be overcome to realize those benefits. Nanotechnology now offers unprecedented capabilities to clean and recycle water and wastewater, harness solar energy, create novel miniaturized chemical sensors and integrated sensor networks, improve food preservation, and provide targeted delivery of pesticides and nutrients. These advances can provide the tools needed for data-driven precision agriculture, can substantially improve resource utilization, and can lower the environmental footprint of food production. However, realizing this goal will require improved understanding of the complex relationships between food, water, energy, and society. This pioneering workshop will bring together leading scientists and engineers from a range of research fields comprising the food-energy-water nexus to identify the most promising opportunities for nanotechnologies to improve overall agroecosystem performance, and to identify the scientific and engineering challenges currently inhibiting widespread applications of nanotechnology in food production. The PIs will apply the pseudo-nominal group technique during the workshop to develop a prioritized list of the most promising emerging opportunities for nanotechnology at the food-energy-water nexus, and to elaborate on how these opportunities should direct research efforts toward the most critical research needs, and potential impacts, in the next five to ten years. This workshop experience will foster dialogue among diverse participants around the most pressing scientific obstacles to implementing nanotechnology for sustainable solutions at the food-energy-water nexus, while also drawing on understanding of the myriad economic, infrastructural, and social constraints that also define the boundaries of both challenges and potential opportunities for within the food-energy-water nexus

1530563(Lowry)/1530594(Unrine)

The development of nano-enabled agricultural chemicals is proceeding rapidly. Nano-enabled agricultural fertilizers and pesticides have a greater potential for direct, massive introduction of manmade nanomaterials (MNMs) into the environment than any other use of MNMs. However, the effects of nano-enhanced agricultural chemicals on terrestrial ecosystems are inadequately studied and largely unknown. Moreover, the properties of these MNMs, and their complex behaviour in soils makes predicting their fate in soils difficult using the risk assessment framework for traditional chemicals. This international interdisciplinary project addresses essential gaps in knowledge about how soil properties, MNM properties, MNM concentration, and transformations affect the spatial and temporal behaviour of agriculturally relevant metal (hydr)oxide MNMs in soils and their uptake by important crop plants including wheat and tomato. In addition, the toxicity potential, uptake into soil organisms, and potential for long-term ecological impacts will be assessed. New methods to track and characterize MNMs in soil at realistic concentrations will be also developed. This new knowledge will help to understand the risks associated with MNMs used in agricultural products, but also help to design safer and more effective nano-enabled pesticides and fertilizers.

MNMs are constantly changing size, composition, and distribution as they age in soils. The particulate nature and inherent instability of NMNs in soils makes many of the test methods for assessing environmental fate unsuitable for MNMs without modification. These features also make MNM fate likely to be concentration dependent in ways that traditional chemicals are not. Information about the rates of change of MNMs in soils, and how these changes affect the distribution of NMNs between soil and pore water, and bioavailability and toxicity of MNMs over time is acutely needed to accurately assess fate and toxicity potential, and to be able to develop realistic and site-specific models for NMN fate and effects. This project addresses essential gaps in knowledge about how soil properties, MNM properties, MNM concentration, and reaction kinetics affect the spatial and temporal behaviour of metal-oxide MNM-enabled pesticides and fertilizers in soils. Specifically, the PIs will assess how these variables influence transformation and distribution in soils, toxicity and multigenerational effects on soil organisms, bioaccumulation/trophic transfer, phytoavailability, and therefore the potential for ecological impacts or human exposures from consumption of key food crops. This project will also develop novel methods to track MNMs in soils and will provide guidance for new assays for assessing fate, bioavailability, and toxicity potential of agriculturally relevant MNMs. The PIs focus on Cu- and Zn-based metal (hydr)oxides that are used commercially as pesticides or are marketed as micronutrient fertilizer additives.

The proposed study will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the fate and risks of MNMs used in agricultural products, facilitate efficient and safe design of nanomaterial-based agriculture products through increasing understanding of how the risks and benefits of these products relate to the MNM properties, and provide simple screening tests that can be applied to MNM-based agriculture products to predict their fate and toxicity risks. Overall, this project will create robust models and validated assays for the evaluation of environmental impacts of MNM-enhanced pesticides and fertilizers, and provide a science-based approach to safe design of agriculture products and their management. The project?s findings will facilitate development of consistent science-based regulations and promote uninterrupted trade of agricultural products (both agrochemicals and food) between the US and the EU. Educational activities will include providing internship opportunities with their industry partners, lab rotations at their international partners, and hosting two undergraduate students per year as part of the CEINT REU program.

There is a critical need to improve the resiliency of U.S. agriculture against stress and disease in an environmentally responsible manner. The emerging field of plant nanobiotechnology can help to mitigate plant stress and make agriculture more resilient and efficient. Similar to drug delivery in humans, delivering nano-sized agrochemicals to plants will require better understanding of how the nanomaterial's properties influence its uptake into the leaves, and its movement through the leaf and plant. This project will determine how to tune nanomaterial properties to allow them to cross the leaf surface, enter leaf tissues, and co-locate with selected target locations in the leaf. The ability to deliver nanomaterials into plants at the required rate, location, and dose for mitigating crop stresses will lead to a paradigm shift in the way society manages agriculture to sustainably meet the demands of a growing population. The project will train one post-doctoral researcher and two PhD students, and will provide research experiences for six undergraduate researchers. The investigators will build an international community of plant nanobiotechnology researchers and enable students to provide much-needed innovation in agriculture.

This collaborative project converges ideas from several scientific disciplines (polymer- and nano-chemistry, nanotechnology, and plant biology) to elucidate how the properties of engineered nanomaterials affect plant leaf-nanoparticle interactions, nd promote delivery of nanoparticles into the plant vasculature (phloem) and leaf photosynthetic organelles. The PIs will enable visualization of uptake of fluorescent metal doped Carbon-dots with tunable size and surface chemistry into wheat and cotton leaves at ultra-high spatial and temporal resolution. Using a unique suite of high-resolution synchrotron X-ray fluorescence microscopy and novel confocal fluorescence microscopy approaches, the PIs will elucidate transport pathways and associations of these nanomaterials with phloem and chloroplasts. The PIs will use targeting peptide sequences to guide these nanoparticles to chloroplasts and phloem in two contrasting leaf anatomies; monocots and dicots. This will generate unprecedented data sets that are used to develop novel n-dimensional leaf-nanoparticle interaction models to predict the uptake and translocation behavior for nanoparticles based on their structural and surface chemistry properties including charge, size, coating hydrophobicity, and targeting peptide sequences. These models will enable the design and synthesis of novel, scalable, and biocompatible, foliar delivery platforms for delivering nano-enabled nutrients and antioxidant therapeutics to specific locations in plants.

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.

Project Summary The recalcitrant and harmful chemicals such as PFASs (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), endangers the environmental, wild-life, and human health profoundly. Among different strategies, bioremediation was established as an effective and reliable solution for remediating persistent environmental contaminants like PFASs. Fungi, such as basidiomycetes (i.e. white rot fungi) are used in bioremediation of PFAS for their strong extracellular biocatalytic capacity with great promise. However, several factors limit commercial applications: 1) need for nutrient addition as the carbon source for the microbe; 2) need to immobilize fungus biomass as pellets to prevent fungus dispersion onto reactor wall; 3) bacterial competition; 4) low efficiency due to the low chemical availability to the fungal mycelium and slow fungus growth. The proposed research will address the imminent challenges of remediating persistent and toxic environmental contaminants using the uniquely designed Nanomaterial-Fungus Framework (NFF). The NFF is a system that novel nano-materials create a biomimic scaffold where fungus can grow, and the scaffold enriches trace level contaminants that fungus can degrade. We aim to unveil the fundamental biodegradation mechanisms of the NFF system, which provides future guidance to modify and improve the system. The engineered NFF system will offer a novel strategy that applies toward a broad range of environmental pollutant bioremediation practices.

Agriculture is critical to the economy, health, and national security of the United States (U.S.). Nitrogen fertilizers are widely utilized in agriculture to ensure an abundant and nutritious food supply for consumers and adequate financial returns for farmers. However, current soil nitrogen (N) fertilizer delivery routes and practices are not efficient with crops using less than 50% of the applied fertilizer loads. This inefficient usage of N fertilizers continues to cause pervasive and vexing environmental problems in the U.S. and worldwide ranging from groundwater contamination, harmful algal blooms, eutrophication to the emission of gaseous N2O pollutants that negatively impact water and air quality. The overall goal of this project is to develop a foliar-based fertilizer delivery process that could efficiently deliver N and other nutrients to crops by applying the to the leaves directly rather than to the soil. To advance this goal, the Principal Investigators of this project propose to encapsulate N fertilizers into functionalized nanoparticle carriers that deliver the nitrogen directly into the plant. These carriers will be designed to be sprayed onto the plant leaves. Special targeting ligands will be attached onto the surfaces of the N nanoparticle carriers and help guide them to the locations in the plants where they are needed. The successful completion of this project will benefit society through the development of new fundamental knowledge that could be leveraged to guide the design and deployment of more efficient and sustainble N fertilizer delivery processes. Further benefits to society will be achieved through student education and training including the mentoring of five PhD students, one postdoctoral scholar, and ~18 undergraduate REU students.

Soil-based nitrogen fertilization of cropland has created severe imbalances in the nitrogen (N) cycle with unsustainable environmental consequences. Managing the N cycle is a perennial engineering grand challenge that can only be met by a radical transformation in the way that N fertlizers are applied to crops. The overall goal of this project is to transform the delivery of N and other nutrients to crops by enabling foliar-based application with highly efficient targeted and plant-activated N utilization. Specific objectives of the project are to 1) Develop biocompatible carrier particles (N-carriers) for efficient N delivery that are derived from agricultural byproducts or earth-abundant minerals; 2) Graft plant-biorecognition molecules onto the N-carriers to enable the targeting of plant chloroplasts to increase N assimilation efficiency; 3) Develop molecular- and multi-scale transport models to predict N-carrier translocation and distribution through the leaf surface, and interactions with internal cell surfaces; and 4) Quantify the life cycle, environmental benefits, and risks of N-carriers relative to soil-applied N fertilizers. To achieve these objectives, the Principal Investigators of this project propose to converge and integrate ideas and tools from various fields/disciplines including nanotechnology, interfacial engineering, particulate and multi-phase transport, plant bioengineering, environmental engineering, and environmental sustainability. The successful completion of this project has the potential for transformative impact through the development of more efficient and sustainable N fertilizer delivery processes that could advance the goals of an efficient and sustainable management of the N cycle.

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.

Maintaining agricultural productivity in a changing climate, while also minimizing the impact of agricultural activity on the environment, is needed to sustainably meet future food demands. To achieve these goals, new tools are needed to improve the efficiency of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, and to protect crops from extreme climate events such as heat or drought. Nanomaterials, defined as materials with no dimension larger than about 100 nanometers, are small enough to efficiently carry agents into plants, and are therefore an attractive class of materials to deliver them to precise locations in crops. Nanomaterials have been engineered to fulfill similar ‘precision delivery’ roles in other fields such as medicine. Leveraging the lessons learned from nanomedicine to create new socially responsible tools for agriculture requires discussions between multiple disciplines and between different groups in those disciplines (research, industry, and government). Therefore, this workshop planned for September 22-23, 2022 in Pittsburgh will bring together agricultural engineers, precision medicine researchers, environmental scientists, plant pathologists and physiologists, precision agriculture specialists, biological engineers, soil scientists, social scientists, and others to discuss the challenges and opportunities to create precision delivery tools for agriculture. About 50-100 investigators from the intersection of these different fields will meet to (1) create a prioritized list of the most transformative nanotechnology approaches that could be developed through cross-pollination of recent scientific discoveries in each discipline, (2) conceptualize new scientific approaches to meet these goals, and (3) create a roadmap and milestones to successful development and adoption of the technologies. The workshop will recruit a diverse group of talented junior faculty, postdocs, and students to benefit from their fresh perspectives and to connect them with potential collaborators and mentors in the U.S. After the workshop, the organizers will prepare a report and a peer-reviewed open-access “Frontiers Review” publication highlighting the key barriers and opportunities for nanotechnology to promote sustainability in agriculture.<br/><br/><br/>A 2-day workshop at Carnegie Mellon University will converge people, knowledge, approaches, and innovations from disparate disciplines, federal agencies, and industry to imagine non-traditional approaches for precision delivery of active agents in plants. The workshop will leverage nanotechnology advances from multiple disciplines to discover and model underlying rules of nanoscale interactions in plants and develop novel and socially accepted nanoscale research and engineering tools for making agriculture more efficient, resilient, and sustainable, and to advance plant-based biomanufacturing methods. The workshop will allow investigators from the intersection of diverse areas of nanoscience/engineering and agriculture to discuss, among other topics: novel approaches for targeted delivery of nutrients, genetic material, therapeutics, and nutraceuticals through synthetic or biology-derived delivery vectors guided by highly selective bio-recognition molecules; the development of nanomaterials that respond to in plantae conditions of pH, temperature, redox state, and signaling biomolecules; and machine learning-based design of nanomaterial chemical and physical properties which can lead to highly precise and controlled delivery of chemicals and biomolecules in plants. Attendees will 1) create a prioritized list of the most transformative nanotechnology approaches for providing efficient and precision delivery of active agents inside plants, 2) identify novel materials and scientific approaches needed to meet these goals as well as the roadblocks to realizing them, and 3) create a roadmap and milestones for overcoming the scientific or social barriers to achieving the goals. Experts in nominal group technique will structure discussions to maximize productivity and crosstalk among disciplines. Educational activities associated with the workshop include: (1) presentations from keynote speakers highlighting state-of-the-art knowledge on the needs for innovation in agriculture for sustainability using plant nanobiotechnology/sensing, immunology and targeted drug delivery, bimolecular engineering, omics, plant genetic engineering, analytical chemistry, and computational chemistry/biology, and precision agriculture; and (2) inviting participation of 10 to 15 senior PhD students and young scientists, defined here as either untenured faculty or scientists fewer than six years removed from their Ph.D. completion. This workshop is aimed at promoting discussions and disseminating information about the potential of nanotechnology to enable precision delivery of active agents in plants. This will shift the trajectory of agriculture sustainability by improving agrochemical delivery, making plants more resilient to climate change, and improve plant biomanufacturing. This will enable future sustainable agricultural practices.<br/><br/>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.