Research Vision: The LIGHT Lab (Cao Group)

The Laboratory for Integrated Green Harvesting & Transport, the LIGHT Lab (Cao Group), is pioneering the multiscale design of mechanical, biological, and chemical systems powered by multiple driving forces (e.g. light, heat, motion, voltage, plasma, magnetism, ultrasound, microwave) to tackle the global grand challenges in climate and sustainability. We are re-engineering the capture, transport, and conversion of energy by mastering the precision control of energy carriers, such as photons, phonons, and electrons, at the molecular and systemic scales.

Beyond developing technologies themselves, we are excited about the opportunities to innovate at the nexus of technology, business, and policy. By integrating the Grantham Institute’s focus on climate policy and innovation with the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s technical rigour, the LIGHT Lab strives to transform fundamental transport science into scalable, global solutions for a sustainable future.

Strategic Impact Areas

While our fundamental work is platform-agnostic, we focus our applications on the "hard-to-abate" sectors and areas that would need strategic planning during rapid development and deployment:

  • Carbon Management: Developing advanced, low-cost technologies for carbon capture, removal, and conversion, and evaluating process integration opportunities (e.g., integrated carbon capture and utilisation, ICCU).
  • Transport Decarbonisation: Engineering high-energy-density sustainable fuels and onboard capture/removal units specifically tailored for the demanding requirements of maritime shipping, aviation, and heavy-duty trucking.
  • Sustainable Data Centres: Investigating pathways for a holistic management of energy, carbon, and water for data centres across conventional, subsea, desert, and space deployment scenarios.
  • Next-Generation Agriculture: Evaluating the potential of nascent food production technologies (e.g. conversion of CO2 into sugar, fat, and protein) for early adoption under specific scenarios (e.g. space, low-resource settings).

Core Scientific Philosophy

At the heart of our research is the belief that the transition to net-zero requires more than incremental improvements; it demands the intensification of energy processes. By leveraging expertise in optofluidics, photonics, and interfacial transport, we develop multiscale frameworks to optimise the delivery of energy to reaction sites. We also integrate robust tools such as techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the opportunities to translate technologies developed at the LIGHT lab for potential adoption.

Our approach integrates:

  • Precision Carrier Transport: Investigating the fundamental physics of how light (photons), heat (phonons), and charge (electrons) interact within engineered materials to minimise losses and maximise conversion efficiency.
  • Multiscale Design & Optimisation: Utilising artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate the discovery of materials and the design of reactors, bridging the gap from nanoscopic transport phenomena to giga-scale industrial systems.
  • Nexus of Technology, Business, and Policy: Evaluating the economic and technical viability, environmental impacts, as well as the policy dimensions of emerging technologies developed at the LIGHT lab for potential translation.