{"id":208928,"date":"2025-01-08T10:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T20:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=208928"},"modified":"2025-02-07T18:25:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T04:25:43","slug":"vincent-erc-earth-slc-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2025\/01\/08\/vincent-erc-earth-slc-president\/","title":{"rendered":"PhD<\/abbr> student leads student engagement in $26M<\/abbr> refrigerant initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

\"person<\/p>\n

As part of a groundbreaking national initiative to create sustainable refrigerants, a University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at M\u0101noa student is taking the lead on integrating cultural and a broader range of perspectives into climate change solutions.<\/p>\n

\"person<\/p>\n

Allen Vincent, a PhD<\/abbr> student in the Department of Chemistry<\/a>, is the president of the Student Leadership Council (SLC<\/abbr>) for ERC<\/abbr> EARTH<\/abbr><\/a>, which stands for Engineering Research Center (ERC<\/abbr>) Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub (EARTH<\/abbr>)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The fourth-generation hub was established by the National Science Foundation (NSF<\/abbr>), which recently awarded $26 million to UH<\/abbr> and five other universities to launch the project<\/a>. This is the first time UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa has been part of a NSF<\/abbr> ERC<\/abbr>, marking a historic milestone for the university.<\/p>\n

ERC<\/abbr> EARTH<\/abbr> strives to create a transformative “sustainable refrigerant lifecycle” by lowering hydrofluorocarbon emissions; creating safe, property-balanced replacement refrigerants; and increasing the energy efficiency of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration systems.<\/p>\n

Student-focused collaboration<\/h2>\n
\"people
Allen Vincent (front row, second from right) and Jennifer Pagala Barnett (back row, second from left) at the National Science Foundation ERC<\/abbr> Biennial Meeting in September 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As president of the SLC<\/abbr>, Vincent leads approximately 30 students from UH<\/abbr> and the partner institutions who are involved in the project\u2019s research and academic activities. Its goal is to foster student engagement, collaboration in ERC<\/abbr> EARTH<\/abbr> activities and enhance ERC<\/abbr> EARTH<\/abbr>\u2019s culture and recruitment of students.<\/p>\n

Vincent instilled values of exploration, camaraderie, advancement and competence in the SLC<\/abbr>\u2019s activities, reflecting ERC<\/abbr> EARTH<\/abbr>\u2019s overarching goals. The SLC<\/abbr><\/a> has already developed frameworks for collaboration and organized student workshops aligning with ERC<\/abbr> EARTH<\/abbr>\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n

“I took the lead to build the SLC<\/abbr> up from scratch, to have the SLC<\/abbr> and its activities structured around the four pillars of ERC<\/abbr> EARTH,” Vincent said. “I am looking forward to helping ERC<\/abbr> EARTH<\/abbr> reach out to the communities in Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> through UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa and get more students involved.”<\/p>\n

In the fifth year of his doctoral program, under the guidance of Professor Rui Sun, Vincent studies gas phase reaction dynamics\u2014how chemical reactions occur between molecules in the atmosphere and interstellar medium, focusing on their reaction mechanisms, thermodynamics and kinetics using quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics simulations. He emphasized how impactful this leadership role has been.<\/p>\n

“Over the past two years as the president of the SLC<\/abbr>, I have been able to network with PhD students and professors from the other five core universities, which is a unique and amazing experience to have,” Vincent said. “As I aspire to be a professor in the future, apart from the academic skills that I am gaining through research, there is a great deal of people skills that I have been able to pick up from everyone on the ERC<\/abbr> EARTH<\/abbr> team.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

—By Marc Arakaki<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vincent’s group has already developed frameworks for collaboration and organized student workshops aligning with ERC<\/abbr> EARTH<\/abbr>\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[251,308,1467,1363,1314,568,1600,660,73,9],"class_list":["post-208928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-chemistry","tag-college-of-natural-sciences","tag-manoa-excellence-in-research","tag-manoa-research","tag-manoa-sustainability","tag-natural-science","tag-public-impact-research","tag-student-recognition","tag-sustainability","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208928"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210518,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208928\/revisions\/210518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}