Front row, from left, Joel Pilli, biology senior; Nusrat Yeasmin, chemistry master's student; Gwenevere Gatto, biology sophomore. Back row, from left: Zayden Brieno, electrical engineering sophomore; Lukman Abubakar, materials & metallurgical engineering master's student; Sameer Jain, mechanical engineering junior; and Dr. Arjak Bhattacharjee.

New Mexico Tech Materials and Metallurgical Engineering Assistant Professor Arjak Bhattacharjee and two renowned researchers—Professor Markus J. Buehler, a civil and environmental engineering professor from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Professor David Kaplan, a biomedical engineering professor from Tufts University—have been awarded a $499,999 grant from the National Science Foundation to support an innovative project aimed at developing next-generation additive manufacturing technologies for sustainable concrete production. Bhattachargee is the principal investigator, and Buehler and Kaplan will serve as co-principal investigators on the project.

(left) Prof. Markus J. Buehler, MIT and Dr. Arjak Bhattacharjee, New Mexico Tech; (right) Prof. David Kaplan, Tufts University, and Bhattacharjee.

Dr. Bhattacharjee and the team will also collaborate with Professor Suman Chakraborty, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, through a joint NSF-Government of India grant.

“As a junior faculty member, I’m blessed to receive this multi-institutional NSF grant with such distinguished researchers,” said Dr. Bhattacharjee. “It has always been my dream to work on next-generation additive manufacturing technologies for sustainability, and this grant brings that dream closer to reality. This project not only enhances NMT’s global research visibility but also offers invaluable opportunities for our students.”

In order to reach its carbon neutrality goals of 2050, the United Nations Environment Program is encouraging development of sustainable alternatives to mitigate the environmental footprint of the construction sector. Concrete is the most common construction material used worldwide, with the primary constituent being ordinary Portland cement, he explained. Its processing accounts for approximately 8% of human-caused global carbon emissions. Therefore, reducing carbon emissions by designing sustainable concrete is a major goal in environmental and sustainability research—and of Dr. Bhattachargee’s research team.

Another facet of this research will tackle solutions in the disposal of plastic waste. In 2018 alone, the U.S. generated about 35.7 million tons of plastic waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Bhattacharjee’s research team also aims to create a novel 3D-printed concrete that incorporates waste materials, such as spent foundry sand and PET plastic bottles, along with marine organisms such as algae. This innovative approach is expected to yield self-healing concrete with multifunctional and sustainable properties, he said.

Dr. Bhattacharjee joined the Materials and Metallurgical Engineering faculty in 2023, after a post-doctoral fellowship at Tufts in the Kaplan Lab of Biomedical Engineering in 2023, and graduation in 2022 from Washington State University with a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering.