The challenges of climate change, renewable energy and sustainability can feel overwhelming, but they also present extraordinary opportunities.
“Energy and sustainability can feel like such a large-scale problem that it can be hard for students to feel like they are empowered to make a difference,” says Lorena Grundy, Practice Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “At Penn Engineering, we are teaching students how to develop the confidence and skills they need to identify the ‘hot spots’ where they can propose actionable changes in their own communities that will make systems more sustainable.”
As a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, Grundy once imagined her future leading a laboratory working in energy and sustainability, but an unexpected experience during her doctoral studies changed her entire outlook on how she could best make an impact in her field.
Foundational Inspiration
Growing up in Ohio, Grundy was passionate about the outdoors and felt a deep desire to protect natural resources for her own and future generations. Her pathway into science began with an interest in biofuels, particularly those derived from corn, given her Ohio roots.
This led Grundy to pursue a bachelor’s in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Princeton. There, she had her first research experience working on the physics of block copolymer nanoparticles, tiny particles that can self-assemble and have applications in drug delivery, coatings, electronics and energy.
“I ended up falling in love with polymer physics and pivoted away from biofuels to instead find a way to combine my passion for polymers with my passion for solving energy challenges,” says Grundy. “That’s when I found an opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. in the lab of Nitash Balsara at Berkeley.”
During her doctoral research, Grundy studied how polymers could be used to create smaller, lighter batteries that could store more energy for renewable applications such as electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels. Her graduate program also required her to teach undergraduate courses, a responsibility for which she initially felt unprepared. However, after teaching her first class, something shifted.
“I remember being concerned about balancing research and teaching,” says Grundy. “Now, I think back and realize how I completely changed my outlook on the responsibility after my first day. I found that I loved teaching, maybe even more than my research.”
Pathway to Teaching
Grundy ended up taking on many more hours as a teaching assistant than were necessary to fulfill her requirement, finding every excuse to teach while working on her engineering dissertation and receiving three outstanding teaching awards in the process.
“When I started to fall in love with teaching, I knew I had to shift my career path to one that would allow me to spend the majority of my time in the classroom,” she says. “I enjoyed being with students one-on-one and connecting with them as people. I also loved the immediate impact that comes with teaching. It is so rewarding to have a student walk into your office hours confused and just 20 minutes later, leave confident.”
For her postdoctoral studies, Grundy transitioned into the education field, pursuing chemical engineering education research at Tufts University with Milo Koretsky, supported by an American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) fellowship.
“My biggest challenge was going from reading journal papers on how lithium anodes work in batteries to reading theoretical books and education articles and learning how to write for that type of audience,” she says. “It was a major adjustment.”
With both technical engineering and theoretical education research under her belt, Grundy joined the faculty at Penn Engineering in the summer of 2024. “I chose to come to Penn because it was clear that people here care about energy and sustainability issues and are already invested in many different approaches to solving them,” says Grundy. “I came into my interview prepared to convince everyone why educating our students in this area was important and was pleasantly surprised when I didn’t have to.”
In ENGR 4215, Energy and Sustainability: Science, Engineering and Technology, students are introduced to a broad array of energy and sustainability technologies, exploring the technical aspects of device engineering, the policy requirements for technology implementation and the societal implications of such implementations.
Widening Impact
When weighing the balance of teaching and research, Grundy sees her greatest potential to make an impact on real-world problems in energy and sustainability in preparing the next generation to solve them.
“My own research might only go so far, but my teaching and mentoring can go as far as all the students who I’d have the opportunity to teach,” she says. “For example, one of my most rewarding experiences at Penn to date was teaching a student who just happened to take my class because it was offered at the right time of day, but she left at the end of the semester with a plan to pursue energy and sustainability as her career.”
In the classroom at Penn Engineering, Grundy currently teaches two courses, one of which is ENGR 4215, Energy and Sustainability: Science, Engineering and Technology, an upper-level introductory course in energy and sustainability that has become the foundational course for Penn Engineering’s newest master’s program.
The Master of Science in Engineering in Energy and Sustainability Engineering will equip graduates with the real-world experience, skills and confidence to make an impact in their future careers, whether they work in an organization dedicated to energy and sustainability innovation or one that is looking to become more sustainable in their practices. “The program is a technical degree designed for students with a technical background,” says Grundy, who serves as Program Director. “But, it also includes the policy, economic and community aspects of energy and sustainability that graduates need to understand in order for their solutions to be successful.”
In ENGR 5020, Engineering Sustainability at Penn, Grundy teaches a project-based course where engineers use their skills to lead authentic sustainability-related projects on campus. “One group started a recycling program in Greek housing, which is an example of a campus sustainability project that would be really difficult for anyone other than students to do,” says Grundy. Another group used sensors to monitor the energy use of fume hoods in Penn labs, while a third worked on an educational carbon capture instrument that will be used in the CBE senior lab course, CBE 4100.
In a hands-on exercise, ENGR 4215 students moved outdoors to Shoemaker Green to analyze the functionality of solar photovoltaic cells. Each group used a kit containing a small solar panel that turns solar energy into electric energy to activate a motor, in this case powering a small fan. Students simulated known issues with solar panels, including blocking different parts of the panels, to experiment with efficiency and observe problems that occur in the real world.
Currently, Grundy is developing a renewable energy technologies lab course, slated to launch in fall 2026. Across all her courses, she designs material to be flexible and active, getting students involved in shaping their own education. She collaborates with Penn Sustainability, the Wharton Climate Center and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy to help STEM students gain a holistic understanding of how to drive real-world solutions.
Energy and sustainability challenges may seem immense, but they are a call to bold action. During her time on campus, Grundy has worked to form connections with faculty working in this space across Penn Engineering and beyond to bridge both research and educational gaps.
“There are many experts here working on these issues, and I love having the opportunity to learn from them and collaborate on training our Penn students to make the biggest impact possible.”
Story by Melissa Pappas / Photos by Kevin Monko