 Hello folks, we'll begin in a minute. We're just waiting for people to zoom in. Well, welcome everybody. I am George Bacille. I am the associate director for the Global Kitechee Center here at ASU and also a professor in the School of Sustainability. We're very excited to have everybody here and to have our inaugural lecture for the Global Kitechee Center. Professor Stratos, we were talking about Professor Stratos Pistocopoulos, we'll hear more about in a second. The Global Kitechee Center is a partnership between ASU's Global Future Laboratories and the Kitechee Institute, which is part of the Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Group over in Japan. And we really focus on bringing health and wellness and sustainability to society with a great focus on circular economy and how we get there. And we're very excited to have Professor Pistocopoulos to talk about the circular economy in a sustainable engineering framework. Just a couple of housekeeping things you guys, we're on a webinar here. So you'll look down, you'll see the Q&A section below. That's where you can enter questions at any time for the professor. And after his talk, we'll have about 15 minutes or so to go over and address those things. So with that, I'd like to welcome George Stephanopoulos, Professor George Stephanopoulos, who is the founding director of the Global Kitechee Center to introduce both himself and our guest speaker. So George, with that over to you. I'm George Stephanopoulos, the director of the Global Kitechee Center at ASU, and I am truly delighted to introduce today to you our special guest. Professor Stratos Pistocopoulos is the director of the Energy Institute at Texas A&M University, and holds the Dow Chemical Chair in the R&D Engineering Department of Chemical Engineering. He has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon. He has authored and authored over 500 major research publications, 15 books, and he has four patterns in the areas of modeling, process control and optimization, energy systems, sustainability, circular economy and systems engineering applications. He is a co-founder of Process Systems Enterprise, a very creative company in Process Systems Engineering, which was so valuable that was recently acquired by Siemens. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering and fellow of the UK Institute of Chemical Engineering, and he is the current editor in chief of Computers and Chemical Engineering, which is the premier journal in computing and chemical engineering. He has received many honors and awards. I would like to note among them that in 2007 he was a core recipient of the most prestigious Macroberts award from the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK. In 2013 he was an elected fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK, and in 2017 he received the US Computing in Chemical Engineering of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering, and last year he received the equivalent of the previous award in the UK. He is called the Sergeant Medal from the Institute of Chemical Engineering. So at this point without any further delay, here is Professor Pisticovlu, the title of his lecture is toward a circular economy systems engineering framework. George, thank you. I hope everybody can hear me well. Well, it's an honor for me to be taking part at this very distinguished seminar series of the Global Kaiteki Center, led by Professor George Stephanopoulos, one of the most inspirational and influential academic leaders and thinkers of our modern era. And George has been a mentor and a role model for me throughout my academic career. So this is a special, you know, place for me. So I would like to share with you some of my thoughts as we build towards what I will call a circular economy systems engineering framework. Before we start, I would like first to acknowledge the contributions of many bodies who have been working with us towards this from NSF, the, you know, Shell, the Center for Water and Talks, the various entities within Texas A&M. I will especially like to mention the School of Law and the Agricultural School that we're collaborating a lot. And my special thanks and a lot of the work I'm going to describe is due to my former PSD and current postdoc and the scientist at the Texas A&M Energy Institute, Dr. Siliana Abramidou. So just at a glance, my research group at the Texas A&M Energy Institute, and I would like to, you know, I'm the spoke person of the bright minds that work behind the, you know, behind the scenes towards our research. I will not resist the temptation to say a few words first about the Texas A&M Energy Institute, just to demonstrate the breadth and depth, you know, like the truly it's one of the beckons of through the disciplinarity within Texas A&M. The current focus of your wish is to discover energy solutions which improve quality of life, breaking together what I will call and that's a pillar for the thinking of the energy institute. This is systems-wide structure and approach in connecting technologies, both fossil and non-fossil, materials and agents, which are important for the energy solutions of the future, together with the societal drivers, economics, law, policies, sustainability and the glue that connects everything together, what we call the multi-scale energy systems engineering, that's the modeling, the data analysis, you know, the medium that connects materials to technologies and link them to objectives, societal-driven objectives. And we have a program that essentially looks at the landscape of the energy research, a strong program on education that I would like to touch upon in the next slide. And I would like just to highlight the truly in the disciplinarity nature, connecting more than close now to 300 faculty affiliates from all around the Texas A&M system, various cabuses and the major state agencies involved. Just at a glance, you know, one of the things that are, we're very proud that the energy institute is this master program that takes essentially instead of a breadth, a breadth depth kind of a depth-based type of look at the various energy aspects, it takes a breadth and let's look at it, you know, looking at the entire landscape of the various factors and key drivers in energy so that we look for instance for energy law, materials for energy, energy technologies, economics and finance, resilience and sustainability and energy desization, and we have both in-person and remote program both on certificate and matter of science with the view to develop the next generation of leaders who look at the various aspects of the energy research and development landscape through quantitative analytical methods. And the model we have is more like an engagement model, like a partnership-based type of initiatives. We participate and lead on behalf of the Texas A&M space or participate in major initiatives, nationwide initiatives like the US manufacturing institutes in rapid and cement manufacturing. This is led by SCHC, this is led by the UCLA, both are Department of Energy type of initiatives, we participate in the super fund program, we have the master program, we have a long-term partnership with CEL and other organizations and we're involved in a number of interdisciplinary activities across KABUS with various partners across the nation and across the globe. So let me go back to what I will try to do today, I will try a little bit to address the issues, how circular economy after defining, you know, see the various aspects of it, how it is linked to much more formal systems analysis and what can engineering and science can offer. Then I will talk a little bit about some of the scientific needs and challenges, what in many ways pose as formidable tasks for the future, and then present a holistic approach, what I will attain and, you know, name it as a circular economy systems engineering, so this is really a systems and engineering lens for addressing circular economy aspects. And that was the basis of, you know, a perspective article that we put forward recently, a year ago, and it was very much at the heart of the webinar that I gave a couple of months ago, on behalf of the sergeant metal prize that I received recently. So my favorite topic for those of you who know me is coffee, so I have been very privileged one of the institutes and centers I collaborate a lot at Texas A&M is with the Coffee Institute of Research and Education. So and for all of you who enjoy coffee, this is like an espresso, it's an excellent motivating example I think because if you look at it carefully, just a cup of coffee uses 140 liters of water, I'll come back to this, I was very surprised when I saw this actually, and quite a bit of energy. And at the same time produces quite a significant amount, five times the amount of CO2 in weight, plastic waste, a lot of dry waste and spent waste, right. At the same time, one has to consider the economics of coffee, you know, so this is, this is after all is a product that we do not, it is inedible yet, you know, if you look carefully and this is a 2016-17 type of figure, we're talking about only in the US over $70 billion type of industry around coffee. So let's have a more closer glance at the supply chain of coffee, so and why, you know, all these metrics are relevant. First of all, you know, coffee comes from a plantation, so you have nutrients that feed the coffee plantations, then you produce coffee berries, then those produce the beans and at that stage is when you export and you pack up the coffee, you use plastic usually for packaging, and then taking coffee to the consumers through supermarkets, and this is the espresso that we all enjoy. So if we look carefully now, what is happening, first of all, the one thing to note is waste is created literally at every stage of the process. At the plantation level, we have bad berries that never are processed any further. We have from the berries going to the coffee bean stage, we have a lot of coffee pulp, coffee husk and the silver scheme, so you know, so there is some separation from going from the berries to the beans. Then they might have also spillages and degradation when you try to go from beans to the packet states, you have plastic waste that generated, you might have expiration degradation and all the stages, all the way to the consumer. So that's one thing to keep in mind. The second important aspect and that's where water comes into play is that water is really used big time and contaminated at various stages of the process, especially for the plantation, then at the coffee beans level and obviously when we actually make coffee. So that's the flow of water. The other dimension is clearly energy and we need a lot of energy and it's essential at every stage of the way, typically coming from fossil fuels producing emissions obviously is used for the plantation level, and you can see plays an important role, all the way to the production of our beloved expression So, and that takes us to the question what is circular economy and what has to do with the coffee. So, if we look at the production from a coffee, you know, from an espresso looking backwards from an espresso production point of view, you can see that the production chain of coffee is clearly correspond corresponding to the linear economy type of model would like to produce coffee no matter what, we reproduce a number of other things in the way. So, and so what is then circular economy that kind of arrangement is first of all to use as much as possible renewable type of energy source substituting the fossil fuels. Try to use the usable packaging as much as possible in the at the early stages for the packets coffee and so forth. Collect waste and produce alternative products so we don't essentially anything that previously was deemed to be a ways to be sort of a sink towards the production of alternative products will come back to this later. And finally, try to return natural resources as much as possible to the source clearly when it comes to water and nutrients in particular. So, in that sense, we are abandoning with the linearity of the classical model that has been prevailing the production supply value chain towards the circular economy model, who are effectively tries to not only minimize the resource extraction, minimize the landfill waste by and doing this by reducing, repairing, remaking and recycling. So it reduces if you wish new pathways towards into the introduction looking at every waste as a source of potentially valuable new product line. But what is at least astonishing and what we have found out is that when it comes to definitions of what the circular economy. There is a quite variety of at least 114 definitions that was a, you know, a relatively recent paper conceptual you know doing an analysis of 114 definitions. And you can see definitions of circular economy about maintaining products as long as possible, minimizing waste and resource use, low consumption and energy and low emissions, the restorative and generative by design, nature, keep materials and use and so forth. So one of the things, one of the thesis of my presentation that one of the takeaway messages will come back to this a little bit lighter is that there is no consistent definition for circular economy, and there's desperately, especially we're trying to develop the science of circular economy, desperately there's a need of a scientific basis. Well, the key of course question is why bother you know why circular economy could become a driving force, both for science for engineering, and for economic economic aspects and sustainability. First of all is the border realization that most of the things we are dealing with either a big proportion of this is wasted, or is not used properly. This is an example of this point like almost 30% of the food is wasted. You know if you think about cars, you know we buy all these expensive cars which only we are using, you know 8% of the useful lifetime. Service, car as a service is gaining a lot of attention at the moment, offices, you know we witness through the COVID you know that you know even before we were using only approximately 40 to 50% of the time the office is now even less so the whole concept of effective use of space is coming. It's a quiz challenge if you wish, and then if you look at one of the most important challenges of the modern era, like what, what are we going to do with the existing plastic that exists and then how substitute, you know with by the gravel plastics that opens up new many new research And then if you look carefully like and here is a slides that just reiterate the importance of looking at both that resources and waste. So here is the per capita if you wish, tons and sort of annual growth of resources extraction in different categories from metal or fossil energy carriers biomass non metallic minerals, and you can see that we are over exhausting our resources at quite a considerable annual rate. At the same time, the total waste generated generation and the waste generation per capital keeps on increasing, while you know the recycling and composting rate you know it's around in 2017 has been at the modest below like around 36%. And there is a lot to be done towards this direction. If you look at from an energy perspective, you know, given that the world population is expected to go over 11 billion by 2100 and you know the energy consumption by a region is going to be increasing especially due to the booming of the Asian countries and so forth, and given the importance of, of energy, which saw the energy as part of the growth of the GDP. So the how we are dealing with the energy transition space in gradually introducing renewables to substitute in the scenarios of the future and I will come back to this in a sustainable promise and the circular economy perspective remains a key challenge for the modern era. So, on the one hand, we have this rising populations which put huge stresses on the resources and on the natural resources. We have increasingly ways, increasingly increased ways that have a negative impact on the environment. And circular economy, especially if we approach it in a holistic manner would definitely contribute to all dimensions of the system of development in terms of economics, environmental and social aspects, and perhaps it offers even a more consensus type of of term towards a more politically and socially accepted term, you know, avoiding if you wish debates about aspects like global warming and this. Obviously, circular economy now is gaining a lot of momentum driven, you know, here you can see just a sample of various initiatives, both at the national level at the new level you also a company level. And very much mostly promoted by governments and businesses around the world, and somewhat, you know, you know, there is a lack of, of a systematic science based approach circular economy that offers tremendous possibilities for growth in the future. So, and that's the second view is key method that would like to explore with you so what are the links of circular economy to engineering and science and to systems analysis. Is it perpendicular to things we have been doing so far, or it is, you know, can we can borrow concepts and create a new scientific basis based on solid foundations. So if you look now carefully, you know, at the various aspects. Now, on utilizing resources extraction and producing, you know, valuable products based on very valuable raw materials. That's where we wish green chemistry and the economy can play very important role here is an example that you only green chemistry. You don't need to go into the details just to see that here is one, but a root if you wish based on one particular chemical reaction that takes advantage of 81% of the atom economy so that in terms that relates to not so maximum resource. You need more resource use to accomplish the same production level where based on much more intelligent green type of chemistry, you can go all the way to 100% atom economy. So that minimizes resource use and minimizes as much as possible ways to the production state. So green chemistry is a very important pillar towards circular economy. If you look at the food then it's water nexus where you look now at the interactions of energy, water, which are natural resource and food which is an organic product in many ways. You know, you clearly need a holistic approach to minimize the stresses between the nexus, the nexus and it's a topic that I'll come into the moment. Pro-scientification is another way where you can guide the circular economy thinking and can be defined and it's such as any process development that can lead to substantially smaller, cleaner, safer and more efficient energy technologies. So for instance here is an example, one of the textbook materials now where you have a very complicated if you wish process involving 11 plus units we don't need to go into the detail this for the production of methyl acetate where you can do the same thing in a single unit, buying that can lead to over 70% reductions in cost energy and pollution. And that's if you wish, the key, you know, that has regained a lot of attention recently and rapid study this is the process education institute under the umbrella of a DOE and ACHC. So, and it's an opportunity that the process industry is exploring revisiting the concept of proscientification. There's a lot of ways to products, reverse supply chains and that's really also the symbiosis. This is an excellent exam where we can look at ways as a room as a useful raw material for other type of interconnecting networks. So here is an as this is the concept where you use the heat waste heat recovery so you use the excess of waste heat as a source. For other parts of the production chain, cogeneration and by product chain, and this is not, if you wish something that of it's like an attempt, a futuristic attempt, this is happening at the moment so there are exams where the symbiosis has really resulted in significant advantages in maximizing the benefits between energy flows, water flows and materials flows. And then you have all the other aspects like life cycle analysis, supply chain optimization, and what I would like to, you know, to connect what is the connectivity of all those aspects of the waste and often domain different domain drivers is that they cannot be analyzed to systems and they cannot be measured in rank and scientific type of approach. So let's look a little bit more closely now at some specific scientific needs and unique challenges that the circular economy may take us. There are certain aspects that I think is, you know, quite challenging for from a research coordination point of view is that you have interconnected when you're dealing with circular economy you are having interconnected players should have multiple stakeholders, different domain different pieces of legislation that may, you know, be applicable to different parts of the value chain, different policy aspects and so forth. For instance, if you can look it from a society point of view, the objectives might be totally different, you know, there might be common economic sustainability and environmental, but obviously, you know, the objectives and the means to implement those at different levels of the decision making value chain difference. And you can see here that different the connectivity between the societal drivers, the national governmental bodies and the network of interest and so this interconnectivity of different players with different objectives, different types of freedom, different pieces of implementation and different stakes at any given time, offer a unique challenge. The other important challenge, if you wish is the multi the inherent multi scale character of the problem it had because it's you need to look, you know, if you talk about atom economy, you need to look at the molecular level if you look at the water in the example of let's say of the food supply and so forth, you look at the plan and enterprise level so you need to look in tandem at the various scales in terms of length and time, and you have also if you look at operation will see later at the energy system where you look at the electricity demand obviously you look to you have to look even at the level of minutes even seconds, whereas the power generation happens at the level of hours and days. So this temporal and special spatial system boundaries play a role, you have different data which come and different instances of the data integration is an issue, model integration is an issue and so forth. The other important challenge is that there's a huge uncertainty in the system, you know, we're talking about reverse reaction pathways, there is variability in the system for demand, energy, solar and weight and so forth, costs, you know, there are my technologies that have not been developed fully so cost is a variable as well, resource availability, so there is a temporal also you know there is a variability in space because you don't have all the sources at the same place, location and time that you want, so all these aspects offer a very dynamic and uncertain environment that needs to be incorporated in such a holistic approach. And the final pillar if you wish of needs and challenges is the assessment criteria that you know you have on the one hand social economic drivers and you have environmental sustainability and you need somehow to synchronize this to coordinate them towards to be with some global net sustainability type of matter. And the key takeaway and the thesis of my presentation that circular economy systems engineering offers such a holistic system systematic if you wish framework to bring together the various pieces of the puzzle together. So let me elaborate a little bit more of this through a number of examples who demonstrate different aspects of the circular economy systems engineering approach. So if you look from an energy transition first point of view, and we're trying to start substituting, you know finite resources in energy based on a fossil fuel scenario towards renewable sources. Then we can think about, for instance, you know, taking advantage of wind and solar energy so here is an example of such an approach where you're trying to optimize renewable energy carriers, such as hydrogen methanol ammonia as part of a hydrogen economy of the future, where production of these carriers are through mostly renewable type of technologies, and then you try to produce them where the wind is blowing and the sun is shining mostly, let's say in some parts of rural Texas in the north, in the west in particular, and then ship this out and produce electricity, a la carte for a particular percentage let's say somewhere in New York. And this scenario that can be approximated or, you know, used in many instances around the globe. And this is part of a major activity that we have been working on at the energy institute for almost now, five, six years in collaboration with the long range research of Shell, where we're trying to transition for a reference case scenario based on primary fossil fuels towards a scenario where everything is fully renewable, but there's no magic button that can take us from the reference case to the long range same. So the devil is always in the transition. So we're trying to analyze what is the optimal pathway through some hybrid transition period and technology case that can take us to us to do the long range aim, both in terms of time dimensions in terms of technology dimensions in terms of risk dimensions. So what are the, if you waste some of the systems engineering aspects that are important here so here is an example for instance, of a map of the, of the heat map of wind within Texas and the heat map of the solar intensity in Texas and you can see that are the parts where you know you don't have neither with no solar everywhere whereas you know and you can see that as places that you mostly need. You are not blessed to have not as much wind as much solar as some other parts which are not as popular. So the idea here of the approach that you know so in order to address this important challenge, you bring together aspects of detailed design if you wish on the production of these chemicals. One advantage how you're going to design the supply chain that will bring those chemicals to the market where you need it and delivering if you wish electricity through, you know, through some installation of some battery capacity also with the wind or so that you synchronize the operation on the electricity demand based on the supply chain and the production. And what you're doing here in essence, from a methodological point of view, you're trying to address the various multi scale issues here we have multi scale issues in terms of time, because you know there is, there is not synchronicity between the production of electricity which is let's say the minute, or like the delivery of electricity at the, at the millisecond if you wish time scale with the production sign the supply chain, as well as in terms of dispersity in terms of where the sources are in terms of actual location, and then you bring together various components of methodological aspects, like the fact that you can need to trade if you wish energy efficiency versus life cycle analysis metrics versus type of risk in terms of technology, given the uncertainty and the stochasticity that exists, and you bring together modeling data design aspects and operation. And that, so that isn't one exam of one particular system like of an energy, the design of an energy system for the future. Now if you try to bring in tandem with such a holistic approach aspects related for instance to water and food things are getting even more complicated so so let's let's have a glance as an exam on the food energy water nexus here is a project that could have been involved for the last few years as just as an exam to see the key message is here so we're looking at San Antonio. This is a regional L in Texas, and this is pretty much the metropolitan area of San Antonio, and what I would like to draw your attention is the various colors so you see this is the various if you wish dots where water is used blue for municipal green for irrigation and red for energy. And now what is important here is not only that you know these are competing with each other you know as you're the population is growing and the precipitation keeps on going down. So there is a demanding craze in terms of water competition competition between municipal irrigation and energy, but what is even more striking is that different pieces of legislation, if you wish, guide the operation and the whole market of how water is drawn for instance by the city by the culture, and by the thirst for the wells that are scattered around the region. So here you have a classical exam of interconnected players, which have different of different stakeholders that are governed with different policies and laws, and they have different objectives, and they coordinate different parts of the next series. You have government, you have business, you have society, and you can see that you know there are different ways that this the state holders interact with each other, and addressing this nexus hotspots in a variety of way. The key point here is that there is no a unified with legislation and policy protocol that governs these interconnected players and that's very important. The, it's the first time actually, last year, a couple of years ago, you know in 2019 that we saw this integration of energy and water research, so this is that passed through the, the bill passed through the house science space and technology on the subcommittee on energy. And here is you know in I would like to draw your attention that when circumsideration of water intensity of the Department of Energy Research Development demonstration programs to help guarantee efficient reliable and sustainable delivery of energy and clean water resources. So the time is coming for even legislation and laws to fall laws and policies to follow the need for such an integration that essentially will allow us then to start addressing the complex systems and networks that underpin, if you wish the links between the the important research questions and business objectives and practical aspects as we try to navigate the space from a municipal point of view, from an agricultural point of view, from a water point of view, and from an energy point of view. So just if you take if you wish and as an example, the energy in red, so on here, key question from the energy sector to the municipal sector is what is municipal energy demand what is the, the, what is the profile for the future, and how we can do what will be the optimal energy portfolio in the mix if you wish to meet this municipal demand from a water point of view, what is the energy footprint for water, what is the optimal portfolio to meet water demand for energy, and then what is the energy footprint for agriculture, and so forth and so on so we can understand the interactions of the various aspects of the extended if you wish, value and supply chain. So that offers huge challenges, both from a methodological but also from a policy aspects, as well as creating the necessary legal frameworks that dictate if you wish the design operation of such system. And that takes us back to my favorite topic which I hope you have fully comprehend by now which is coffee. So let's revisit now the supply chain of coffee, and look at it like from the point of view on how we create a holistic framework towards analyzing designing and creating opportunities for the future so question number one is how can we make informed decisions for the transition from a linear to circular food supply chain in general, and let's use coffee as an example. So this is some of the key pillars of steps if you wish towards what we call a systems engineering framework for the analysis and design of the circular economy systems of the future. And I'm looking so so we're looking at production pathways ways utilization pathways representation that includes this alternative pathways in a cohesive type of mathematical model that then we analyze and solve and then analyzes from a risk cost energy efficient and the like so just to give you a flavor of what this methodological framework so about here you see a number of alternative production pathways from fresh coffee cherries, you know, different methods that exist and different steps for every method. Then you can have pathways as far as waste utilization is concerned at the palm husk silver skin and spend coffee ground you know so those open up even more possibilities, and then you put everything together. This is like a reverse supply chain if you wish, creating a bio refinery mimicking a bio refinery if you wish based on spend off ground right you know so we can start now. Analyze so that's what you need to be an understanding the pathways the chemistry involved here, the production facilities you know does it make sense from a life cycle analysis from a cost point of view and so forth. And here is some of you know initial results of what this type of analysis can do this is like if you wish a representation that allows you to put all those conceptual pathways together, and then you can do like some type of modeling and optimization to come up for instance with promising pathways, and then you can do trade off analysis, like trading off energy versus minimum waste and see the various scenarios in terms of different production steps if you wish, based on these various options that you're heading. That gives you with some, some means to be able to assess this type of scenarios in a systematic way. And that brings me to the final points that I would like to make in this presentation. First of all, the desperate to need for a unified metric. And here what I'm trying to attempt is like a glance of a first attempt towards such a metric development and for, let's say for the use of various of a of a businesses industries and so forth, where you look at a reduction material losses to the ways, the reduction of input and use of natural resources of procurement and water, increasing the set of new resources that's the energy of the waste dimension, emissions and spillages, and then durability let's say that links to resilience and reliability and just as an exam like energy, you're able to measure what is the percentage of the penetration of renewable energy vis-à-vis the total energy consumption that an organization and company or a business needs. And that allows you to start now creating maps of solutions and visualization tools like this, where you can map the waste, the emissions, the energy, the water procurement and durability in terms of an index as a function of time, from zero to one. And then you can see for instance, how you trend in terms of durability in terms of water, you know, and the rooms for improvement in each one of those vectors, and you can go even a step further and aggregate all these, let's say by taking like a combination of all these metrics in some scientifically sound way, and you create, let's say, an index for circular economy, which gives you if your overall performance as a function of time, and that can be used as a valuable information, both to consumers to producers to businesses, and you know to the market as a whole. So let me close my seminar by first looking at some open research questions, which I hope are articulated through the exams and the various challenges. First of all, I think one of the key aspects is an attempt to develop some kind of a consistent basis so that we are able to cover different alternatives towards circular economy, on an apple to apple basis and not on an apple to orange basis. Then a second major open question is the uniqueness, you know, like you know there are many combinations like I like some of these that you can arrive at circular economies, which ones are scientifically specifically, you know, analyze them from a certain dynamic limit point of view, analyze them from a uniqueness point of view robustness resilience support, which of those are going to be more efficient from a technical economic point of view, but also you know, from an overall point of view from a lifecycle point of view. Then it's the issue of scale. Are we talking about is it better to go towards centralized type of systems designed or decentralized in other words, is it more suitable to think of assist for a circular economy based on decentralized aspects or not policy regulations play people tell importance, not only in in providing if you wish incentives towards the adaptation of circular economy, but also because they play key role if you wish in the acceptance of such approaches, and then of course the overarching if you wish challenge remains winning desperately a science based engineering with different systems and approach along the lines that I have been offering. So a couple of takeaway messages to close this seminar circular economy relies on systems wide innovation so it has been primarily led by practitioners the business community and policy makers and there is indeed for building a strong scientific basis. I have articulated the fact that the systems engineering approach can have a big impact on the understanding and analysis of building circular economy supply chains and towards the convergence of different disciplines towards a common vision of the site. So, we are articulated that see a circular economy systems engineering provides the glue between various domain and science and the generic basis and links to policy regulation and sustainability approaches. And I would like to close that it can offer also a model for the generation next, if you wish, for from a societal point of view, bringing science based systems analysis towards materials, effective resource utilization health aspects, the nexus which is going to be a people for the future, and overall sustainable manufacturing. Thank you very much I'll stop at this point I will be glad to take any questions, and let me tell you how honored I am to be the part of this distinguished seminar series here at the global type tech center at Arizona State University. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Thank you very much for a wonderful, a wonderful lecture. We just have really a few minutes of time everybody for some q amp a. Please let me start off with one question and we'll get to some of the ones that started here that was a really, I think comprehensive holistic approach and you brought a number of times you brought up this, having to balance where we are today with tomorrow. This notion of transition and I think that folks in engineering and in chemicals and processing systems analysis often have a lot of confidence and optimizations that folks in the sustainability field don't necessarily share. I wonder if you could talk a little bit and maybe this is within the Texas energy crisis in the shell example. Optimization versus sort of adaptive management, how you're the systems protein you're bringing actually let's be flexible and adaptive. Yeah, that's a great point George thanks for bringing you know there is an opportunity for convergence of terminology and expertise of you wish and in my opinion I don't see I can see convergence between, you know an adaptive type of management, you know, which essentially allows us to navigate the transitions from A to B to C in an adaptive manner through modeling and this type of systems approach which essentially can mimic, you know so we can create with modeling paradigms which can convert the adaptive management style into some quantitative kind of analysis so I see this opportunity for convergence of the various fields. And especially for navigating the transition space and I see there was a question on how, you know, like, do we exclude what we include in the analysis of transitions or do we exclude many aspects. The wonderful thing and why I personally believe in circular economy as a model, and I offer this holistic approach is that we don't exclude anything in fact you know because if you look at how we define the technology breakthrough that can take us back to the natural resources, big and fossil or whatever, that in a way essentially addresses, if you know the balance of renewables versus any other type of scenario right you know, and this is intensified by the fact that there is not a magic button that can take us as I said from A to Z. And if you think also like you know many people advocate the use of batteries as a solution to everything right you know in the future of the future, and that's another exercise or an adventure really in resources utilization, you know, like, and if you look at from a lifecycle analysis and resources utilization in general, you know where are you going to find the lithium or any rare metal, other than Bolivia or any other country right you know so and so so essentially some one of my key takeaway messages and I think what the community as a whole as a scientific discipline is converging is that everything is on the table, and that we need that's my thesis on top of this is that we need the quantitative framework that will take us through the most promising perhaps solution spaces and that will allow us to navigate in a consistent basis. So we compare various scenarios, we do this in a holistic holistic meeting a multi attribute point of view, breaking the various stakeholders together, and it's systematic way so that's the key message. Yeah, and that's interesting we have another question from from Kevin duly a professor here in the business school and who works with us at the global Kentucky Center. I'm noting that a lot and I think this is important for what you're saying, externalities, the current externalities are often only coming to the conversation at scale, when we see the economic implications, or through some sort of policy push. Just given what you described and through your talk. It's like doing by, by, by bringing visibility to these pathways and to these externalities and how they aren't just negatives, but their pathway models you know their ways to solutions. We can maybe open up another leg in moving to action, rather than just economics or just policy, and through knowledge and visibility, or do you still feel like yeah I know at the end of the day it's economics and policy and we're just bringing the science into the into big. I think, I think you need to to tango sometimes three right you know so in a, in a way, policy definitely can drive science technology can offer pathways towards new possibilities. But at the end of the day, we need to synchronize the business drivers with the policy drivers and the technical and the technology drivers right you know now the dynamics of these spaces may be different. You know you saw the example the food energy water nexus, some of the science exists, almost for a decade or so, only recently there was a need to, you know from a legislation point of view to synchronize water with energy right you know. So, so we need to pay a little bit more attention on the time constants if you wish of the system towards reaching solutions that can deliver such holistic approaches, clearly, the business driver often. I mean, it cannot be overlooked for for sure, but policy can offer incentives and technology solutions, you know, by bringing different science domains and then genetic approach to things is necessary to provide the glue towards what can happen and what cannot have. Right. Right. Absolutely. And it, and it can create trust. It can create risk, you know, like understanding of the risks involved, not only in terms of cost, but technology, but also confidence, you know, you know from an overall, you know, acceptability point of view. Well, we unfortunately we're out of time here we have we have another one of our guests said maybe we should talk about the conical economy as we had another dimension of consumption. And then one of my colleagues internationally asked about the speed of change in technology but and we'll have so you guys will have to leave everybody with. You know, we are, we are bound by the speed that we need to go within an hour but speed of change is attached upon it because that's a risk right so you know when you do this analysis, the time dimension, like acceptability or a red the ability of the technologies and acceptability by solution a different time is this is very important so. Yeah, yeah. All right, let me let me thank you against us but let me turn it over to George Stephanopoulos to close us out here. Can you hear me. Yes, George. This was a wonderful to the force on the system science behind the circular economy. We take your message very, very seriously, and we agree with the main thrust of it. The overall comprehensive and integrated view is, in our opinion as well, the way forward. And as the global kind of center we look forward to enhance the interaction with you as time goes by. The thing that I did not mention is that this webinar comes with a compulsory physical visit by you. I know you are vaccinated so we're discussing how we can do that as early as possible. We'll be delighted, George. Thank you for the kind of. Once we lost George there for the time. This event. To present to you. Can you hear that like. You're cutting in and out a little bit, George. There you go, you're back. All right. Oh, my God. I'm very honored. I would like to thank you all. I mean, great. Thank you very much. I mean, this is a great honor. I would like to thank all. Thank you. You're going to receive that. That's great. Thank you so much. All right, let me, let me jump in jump here. Thank everybody who's still here. I think we have a great honor here. And I would like to thank Stratos a real a real pleasure, a real honor. We'll of course follow up and anybody who's still out there. We're happy to gather questions and share them with Stratos. And congratulations on being our first distinguished inaugural lecture. And with that. Bye. Thanks all.