A space that will be a mix of museum, simulator, and artistic studio aims to bring together researchers, entrepreneurs, decision-makers, and students to expand the debate on solutions for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonization, for example.
A new laboratory at the University of São Paulo (USP) will bring together a science museum, product and technology simulator, and artistic studio in one place. The idea is that the 400 m2 space, which is installed inside the Inova USP building in São Paulo, houses immersive and virtual reality technologies for exhibiting and experimenting with solutions for a diverse audience made up of students, researchers, decision-makers, and entrepreneurs. The inauguration takes place this Monday (8/4), at 2 p.m. (Av. Prof. Lúcio Martins Rodrigues, 370, Butantã).
Named USP-RCGI Digital Lab, the laboratory brings together the expertise of some USP laboratories, such as the Fluid-Material Interaction Laboratory from the Center for Research and Innovation in Greenhouse Gases (RCGI), Simulations Applied to Materials: Atomistic Properties from the Physics Institute (IF), and Fluid Dynamics Center (NDF) from the Polytechnic School.
“The laboratory is in line with the research being developed at RCGI, with a focus on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonization. It will meet several demands; we have to encourage discussions between different communities, such as researchers, businesspeople, students, and decision-makers from both government and industry,” declares Julio Romano Meneghini, professor at the USP Polytechnic School and scientific director of RCGI.
For Caetano Rodrigues Miranda, professor at IF-USP and director of Knowledge Diffusion at RCGI, “the USP-RCGI Digital Lab will allow people to experience the problem of climate change from a molecular to a planetary scale,” he says. “We will use art as a way of disseminating the concepts we work on at RCGI,” he adds.
One of the technologies that will be used is the molecularium, a kind of planetarium that is only made of molecules. “The molecularium involves not only visualizing molecules but also interacting with them in virtual reality. We know the importance of art and its power to increase people’s engagement. Therefore, we are going to create artistic residency programs in the laboratory to unite art and science,” says Miranda.
For Meneghini, “another application is the visualization of flows with applications in aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, compressors, CO2, hydrogen, and natural gas seals, among others. It also makes it possible to visualize fuel cells, reactors, and wind turbines, among others.”
The space has a studio for producing 360° videos. In addition to the interaction and “handling” of virtual molecules, the project makes it possible to transform some of the properties of these molecules into sound. “With this, it is possible to create, through sound design, elements for composition and also an instrument to instigate and make people more interested in subjects such as climate change, extreme events, carbon sequestration, and many others,” he says.
An example of this possibility of presenting interactions that occur on a molecular scale would be carbon dioxide (CO2). “Through immersive technology, it is possible to visualize the transformation of the CO2 molecule, an agent of the greenhouse effect, into another product that can be used for other purposes, or even understand a process of CO2 trapping in geological reservoirs. These are processes that involve a part of catalysis, and the researcher, for example, could experience what the world would be like on an atomic scale,” he says.
The laboratory also allows simulation on a planetary scale. “These immersive technologies, or as the industry calls them, digital twins—the reproduction in a virtual environment of equipment, processes, entire factories, or planets, fed by real data—allow us to verify the dynamics on a planetary scale of some effects that are happening, which makes it possible to predict scenarios within this immersive environment,” he states. “This makes exploration processes much more natural, and situations may arise that are completely different from those expected. The result of these simulations and visualizations of the problem are technologies and proposed solutions that are more suitable for mitigating climate change,” he states.
The laboratory will work on different fronts. One of the objectives is to work with education so that future generations have a better understanding of climate change, technologies, and solutions to combat it. Furthermore, the powerful simulators can be used not only by researchers but also by entrepreneurs and startups to validate their innovative products and services. All this with the aim of uniting science and art so that the dissemination of knowledge has greater engagement and an innovative aspect.
“In addition to their educational and simulation nature for researchers and entrepreneurs, these technologies make arguments much richer. If I need to argue with a politician or with someone who is working on new legislation, it is much easier to show what CO2 is, for example, on the atomic scale and what the effect of this is on larger scales,” he says.
For Miranda, one of the greatest assets and objectives of the new laboratory will be to add more people to the debate. “We have some examples of museums, science and art programs, and research centers around the world, but this laboratory was not inspired by a single model, which makes it very innovative,” he concludes.