{"id":1818,"date":"2018-05-29T14:20:31","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T19:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/?p=1818"},"modified":"2018-05-29T14:00:35","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T19:00:35","slug":"albert-kyi-saving-the-earth-one-molecule-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/albert-kyi-saving-the-earth-one-molecule-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Albert Kyi: Saving the Earth One Molecule At a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Albert Kyi is involved in the GCS community in more ways than one. As the leader of Science Olympiad, co-leader of Model UN and Student Ambassadors, and Captain of both Varsity Cross Country and Varsity Track, one might think that his life is pretty booked-up. However, in addition to all of his leadership commitments and school work, he has found the time to develop a project that initially began as part of March Madness in sophmore year: the construction of a carbon-capture machine.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Essentially, Albert wanted to build a machine that would remove carbon dioxide, a huge cause of climate change, from the air.\u00a0In order to complete his project, Albert had to work with 22 experts as he had no previous mechanical experience and had limited knowledge of the science behind his plan. These experts included environmental lawyers that helped him understand the policy and legislation surrounding carbon capture and environmental protection, engineers from Cooper Union to help understand the functionality of the machine, members of the Grace maintenance staff to learn how to physically construct his project, experts on the technology of carbon capture, and a professor who had researched carbon capture technology before.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the 2017 March Madness Symposium, Alberts project was by far one of the <\/span>most impressive<\/span><\/a> and time consuming projects being displayed that night. At that point, the machine was functional, but, according to Albert, not as efficient as it could be. Now, more than a year since the symposium, Albert is still hard at work on his machine. Although the original model is no longer functional after being elbowed, Albert is in the process of developing a more permanent and efficient version of his project.<\/span><\/p>\n

His work is currently being funded by a grant he received from the <\/span>Michael Perelstein Discover Your Passion<\/span><\/a> foundation. The grant is for students in NYC who want to pursue something other than their academics. Albert won the greatest prize for $5,000 towards his work. According to Albert, the next step is to figure out what to do with the carbon once it\u2019s been contained. In the first model, the carbon was simply moved into a box, however Albert hopes to figure out a way to repurpose the substance, such as feeding plants or making stone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"In addition to furthering the functionality of his machine, Albert has used his grant money to attend conferences about environmental science. He even went out to the West Coast to meet with people who specialize in carbon capture technology and the policy surrounding it.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine your everyday junior accomplishing so much, but Albert is hardly ‘everyday.’ When I asked him how he manages to balance all of his commitments, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t sleep as much as I used to.\u201d On a more serious note, he added, \u201cIt\u2019s not that much work when you have a lot of nice people surrounding you. I have so many friends at school that keep me motivated to do what I\u2019m doing. I think that matters more than managing my time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"At the end of May, Albert attended the <\/span>International Conference on Negative CO2 Emissions<\/span><\/a> in Gothenburg, Sweden. Over four days, scientists shared research and findings about different methods of carbon capture technology. Albert also hopes to learn more about the uses of carbon once its been contained. An important aspect of the conference for Albert was the discussion of the implementation of such inventions and designs and how legislation and policy affect their usage.<\/span><\/p>\n

For now, Albert is extremely interested in furthering his project. However, long-term, he would like to keep his options open. He find himself mostly interested in \u201chow science can be used in a positive way.\u201d Whether that is carbon capture, medicine, or something entirely new, he is not sure yet. All that he does know for sure is that he wants to pursue science that does good in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Albert Kyi is involved in the GCS community in more ways than one. As the leader of Science Olympiad, co-leader of Model UN and Student Ambassadors, and Captain of both… Continue reading “Albert Kyi: Saving the Earth One Molecule At a Time”<\/span> <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,200,7],"tags":[310,312,311],"appful":[],"class_list":["post-1818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-recent","category-school","tag-carbon-capture","tag-environment","tag-global-warming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9uEnr-tk","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Kyi-with-Machine.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1818"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1828,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818\/revisions\/1828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1818"},{"taxonomy":"appful","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/appful?post=1818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}