Empowering students to calculate the carbon footprint of research
William Smith, Aimee Bebbington, and Ranjini Sircar are PhD students on a mission to track the environmental impacts of their PhD research. Collectively, their work spans neuroscience, biology, mathematics, and physics. Mentored by Dr Stefan Pulver in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience, they have developed ‘WillCO2st’, a phone app that makes it easier to track the carbon intensity of research.
The app allows users to account for carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions in three main categories: experiments, travel, and direct emissions, with further development planned to tackle procurement. The project is part of a larger, grass roots effort to empower postgraduates to publish Carbon Appendices which estimate the carbon footprint of PhD work, which can then collectively be collated into a codex of costings to guide university operations, interactions with funding bodies, industry partners, government agencies, and other stakeholders.
William, Aimee, and Ranjini are each part of larger communities expanding across Scotland, Europe and Asia and they are now using this network to plant seeds for carbon monitoring at other institutions. As a team, they have applied for funding to present at Europaeum Winter School, a student-led forum for catalysing action on the European Green New Deal.
The Team’s mission to empower students to be carbon accountants is also now growing and extending to taught masters students through the innovative Masters of Research in Neuroscience programme, and to undergraduates through Forging Sustainable Research (PN4112) a new problem solving module which will launch in spring of 2025 as a recipient of a Golden Dandelion Seed Award.
This work shows how sustainability initiatives can link diverse funding sources together in common purpose. The work was funded by an EASTBIO Industrial CASE studentship (Smith), a St Leonards World Leading Studentship (Bebbington), and a Global PhD studentship (Sircar), a Global Office Collaborative Research Grants with Emory University, as well as a grant from the RS Macdonald Trust (Pulver). It is now being taken forward with support from the Scotland’s Futures Series, an internal award to support projects to enhance discussion and debate on issues pertinent to Scotland’s future.
Overall, this project aims to position St Andrews’ students as world leaders in efforts to promote sustainable research. Globally, this aligns with United Nations Development Goals through raising awareness and developing robust, accessible, inexpensive carbon mitigating strategies.