A mural at SRI asks, “what inspired you today?” with drawings and words including “hope” and community”
The Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress came to the United States for the first time in 2025. As host, Chicago and the University of Illinois System played a big role in the conference, as did DPI.
From early weather alerts to energy microgrids, here’s a look at the panels, insights, and innovations DPI researchers offered the attendees.
Chicago as a Global Leader in Climate Resilience: Industry-Academic Collaborative Strategies for Urban Sustainability and Economic Growth
Co-hosted by DPI and , the panel included Climate and Urban Sustainability Lead Ashish Sharma, who talked about the work of the DPI climate hub team, including:
- Active and passive environmental sensing
- High-performance computing
- Machine learning and AI, and their ability to “break silos” among academic disciplines these days
- An in-house data visualization platform
As one of DPI’s first panels, the event also served as a soft launch for AerisIQ, an early weather warning and forecasting system.
Building Better Solutions for Climate-Induced Multi-Hazards in the Global South
Scientists can predict catastrophic events like floods, landslides, and wildfires, but they need quality, long-term data to do it, along with computational power, both of which can be in short supply for the countries that are most vulnerable to these disasters, said Postdoctoral Researcher Abhinav Wadhwa.
Additionally, the panel members said, there can be a gap between predicting these disasters and actually taking steps to prevent them. However, having conversations and dialogue about it is a first step, Wadhwa said.
“We have seen a lot of people having a lot of interest in doing this,” he said. “Where there is interest, obviously it is possible to mitigate and adapt.”
Analyzing Wastewater to Monitor Public Health
DPI’s work in wastewater monitoring has been well-documented and recognized with a Chicago Innovation Award in 2022.
The team that originally began the program, including DPI Research Scientist Rigel Gjomemo, presented their work in a panel focused on the program’s genesis as a way to collect anonymized collective health data, and an explanation of how data insights become public health decisions.
Rachel Poretsky, associate professor of biological sciences at UIC, addressed the project from a virus identification perspective. Aaron Packman, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern, explained the engineering and sampling processes that went into data collection. Eloesa McSorley, an epidemiologist at the Chicago Department of Public Health, described how the data from the program informed public policy.
“This is work that is only done because of strong partnerships that have been built over a long period of time,” McSorley said.
While the system was designed to detect the SARS-CoV2, it’s evolved to detect influenza, and potentially even cold medicine, alerting public health officials to outbreaks of serious colds.
“It’s a very promising field, and it’s interdisciplinary,” said Gjomemo. There are “a lot of problems that still need to be solved.”
Responding to Weather Hazards on Transportation
One-third of greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector. As those emissions lead to higher temperatures, a vicious cycle develops: the hotter it gets, the more people run their air conditioning and drive instead of walk, creating more traffic congestion, which creates more greenhouse gases, which raises the global temperature.
“If we’re going to get the future right,” said panel moderator Karn Vohra, a postdoctoral researcher with the Clean Energy and Ethical Transportation Solutions (CLEETS) Global Center, “we need to understand the present correctly.”
With that in mind, this panel focused on how transportation systems, especially those that rely on clean energy, can become more resilient in the face of climate change and extreme weather.
It was one of three panels featuring work by researchers affiliated with CLEETS.
Postdoctoral Research Associate Winston Wu presented his work on assessing the impact of traffic on heat emissions. Among his findings: areas with a low building density have more heat emissions from traffic. His future research will examine methods of mitigating traffic-induced heat.
Senior Research Associate Peiyuan Li’s presentation focused on developing region-aligned climate scenarios. His work incorporates aspects of Wu’s, as it meshes large-scale weather dynamics with fine-scale traffic data.
Current Decision-Making Tools for Transportation Sector and Future Directions
This series of 12 lightning talks focused on research efforts helping to guide transportation agencies and policymakers to make informed decisions.
Three DPI researchers presented their CLEETS-related work:
- Postdoctoral research associate Carolina Veiga spoke about a visual system for creating and analyzing multiple battery electric truck simulations
- Abhinav Wadhwa demonstrated a high-resolution toolkit showing the flooding likelihood for both gasoline and electric fueling stations across Illinois.
- Software Engineer Ajay Satish Kumar presented a detailed demonstration of AerisIQ
CLEAN in the Americas: Start Local, Unlock Financing, and Leverage Technology to Bridge Local Action and Global Goals
The panel was kicked off by DPI Research Director Venkat Venkatakrishnan, who presented information about the Community-Led Environmental Action Network (CLEAN), explaining what makes cities successful at sustainability efforts. The panel was coordinated by DPI Decision Intelligence Lead and UIC CBA faculty member Selva Nadarajah. Following the presentation, the audience played a Kahoot based on what they’d just learned. The winner? Senior Research Associate Anuj Tiwari.
One Health in Action: A Roadmap for State Implementation to Address Public, Animal, and Environmental Health Challenges
One Health is the idea that the health of people, animals, and the environment are interconnected — illustrated very clearly by COVID-19. SRI held a plenary session about the One Health in Action concept on June 17, and, fresh off his Kahoot win, Tiwari moderated a panel focused on its practical implementation the next day.
“Health is not built,” he said. “It is sustained in the balance shared by humans, animals, and the earth itself.”
A “dream panel” of experts considered the significance of One Health from their respective disciplines: Sameer Vohra, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health; Gavin Shaddick of the University of Cardiff, who specializes in environmental and climate change modelling; veterinarian Matthew Leslie, who works for IDPH as a zoonotic epidemiologist; and Hugh Musick, assistant vice chancellor for population health sciences and co-director of the Institute for Healthcare Delivery Design at UIC.
The group discussed how One Health would work — and the significant roadblocks that stand in the way.
“Public health is inherently a team sport,” Sameer Vohra said. But the players involved aren’t used to playing together and sometimes don’t even realize they’re on the same team.
If it works, Leslie said, One Health will require “diverse sets of voices in the classroom”: everyone from public health researchers to computer scientists, GIS experts, lawyers, bioethicists, and more.
Echoing the team sport concept, Leslie said the solutions, once found, are scalable. “If we have a great solution in Illinois,” he said, “we will share with other states.”
Compute, Transport, and Energy Nexus
Throughout SRI there was a lot of discussion about alternative fuels and transportation strategies. This panel dove into the data and computation opportunities that drive some of the implementation, including edge and cloud computing, and LLMs.
Moderated by Cardiff-based CLEETS researcher Omer Rana, the panel featured academics and private-sector scientists.
On the question of an opportunity that AI/data infrastructure could enable for transportation, Venkatakrishnan mentioned distributed energy resources management — not just for rural or developing areas. Edge intelligence could also enable microgrids for communities and better networks to manage solar power distribution.
The panel evolved into a discussion of the ethical responsibilities of research in general, and the future of AI.
Look for more coverage of SRI in the coming weeks!
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Karan Jogi and Anuj Tiwari at the DPI table at SRI.
Author: Jeanie Chung