The Notre Dame Club of the Jersey Shore announced that the annual Hesburgh Lecture, “Powering the Planet in a Carbon-Constrained World,” will be held at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12 in Christian Brothers Academy Theater, 850 Newman Springs Road, Lincroft. CBA is co-sponsoring the lecture with the Notre Dame Club of the Jersey Shore and the speaker is Professor Edward J. Maginn, Ph.D., University of Notre Dame department chair, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. 

According to Professor Maginn, many global problems could be solved if more people had access to plentiful and inexpensive energy. Most primary energy sources are carbon-intensive. Professor Maginn will describe technologies to reduce the carbon intensity of our power that are under development at Notre Dame and elsewhere.

For example, he said that coal is a cheap and plentiful resource that fuels more than 40 percent of the world’s electricity. But coal-fired power plants emit climate-altering greenhouse gases into the environment daily. To minimize the amount of carbon dioxide released from coal-fired power plants, a team of Notre Dame faculty developed ionic liquids that can effectively and economically separate carbon dioxide from flue gases, so it can be stored underground instead of being released into the atmosphere. This process is more effective and less expensive than current separation technology – an energy-intensive process that takes more than 30 percent of the energy produced to capture the carbon dioxide.

Meghan Vaccarelli, Jersey Shore Club president, noted that since 1986, the Hesburgh Lecture Series has shared Notre Dame’s academic excellence with alumni and their local communities as a tribute to the example of lifelong learning set by Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., university president from 1952 to 1987.

“As a teacher in Monmouth Beach Elementary School, I am concerned about what kind of planet we will leave our students, children and grandchildren. Having Professor Maginn coming to the Jersey Shore demonstrates the commitment of our club and the university to expanding the knowledge and awareness of our alumni and area citizens,” she said.

Professor Maginn received a bachelor of science degree from Iowa State University and a doctorate from the University of California (Berkeley), both in chemical engineering. He joined the faculty of the University of Notre Dame in 1995. He currently teaches courses on thermodynamics, molecular modeling, separations and process design. His research focuses on the use of molecular modeling to design new materials for energy and environmental applications. He has been named teacher of the year in the College of Engineering and has received several national awards for research.

Admission is free and the public is invited.  Refreshments will be served after the lecture.  The club will collect non-perishable food, paper products and toiletries for a local food pantry.

For more information, contact Dave Heskin at [email protected], 732-245-5131, or Ed Sullivan at [email protected], 848-217-7053.