In This Story
Our award-winning faculty is dedicated to tackling the grand challenges of our time, which include issues surrounding sustainability. That dedication can be seen anywhere you set foot on a Mason campus, with our nearly 1,000 acres of land, waterways, forests, and buildings being used as a dynamic Living Lab for hands-on applied environmental research.
The Green Assessment and Decision Guidance Tool (GADGET) may be the least visible Living Lab project, but it’s among the most comprehensive and complex. Department of Computer Science professor Alex Brodsky and his team are working to develop a tool that will help Mason reduce our carbon footprint and achieve carbon neutrality by 2040 in the most cost-effective way.
Brodsky and his team are gathering data on things like heating and cooling efficiency, energy costs and storage, and contractual agreements to create an algorithm and a computer model that university leadership will be able to use to project costs and savings and make sound decisions regarding Mason’s space and energy needs.
This feature is adapted from the Fall 2023 Mason Spirit magazine.