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Pioneering Stage
Pioneering Stage
We started with carbon accounting for Drosophila neuroscience research at the Univeristy of St Andrews.
See what we've discovered and codexed through our publications!
Smith et al., "PhD Students as Carbon Accountants: The Carbon Costs of a Neuroscience PhD" In Preparation
Research Costs
Research Costs
We took power metres and WillCO2st to our lab and measured the cost of frontier experimental techniques and essential scientific equipment.
Here, you can see the yearly carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) released by one year of research by a single PhD student in the Pulver Lab.
The % of persistent equipment maintaining our research is also shown.
Travel Costs
Travel Costs
Aside from research, students rely on greenhouse gas-emitting travel routes to access their institutions and travel to conferences for networking and distirbution of their skills and insights.
For one PhD student, a year's worth of domestic and international academic travel resulted in 424kg CO2e.
Procurement Costs
Procurement Costs
Research demands students to aggregate resources across the world. Being considerate of procurement-related greenhouse emissions can allow students and institutions to focus more effectively on mitigating their research's carbon footprint.
We identified 2 main items of procurement for Drosophila research:
① Vials
② Drosophila Stocks
A year's worth of work for a PhD student amounted to between 76-230kg CO2e from vial procurement (8500) and new Drosophila fly constructs from Indiana, Bloomington (44).
The large range in our initial estimations underscores the paucity of accurate information related to procurement. Collective action by students through institutions can begin to reveal travel routes and means for equipment widely used in different scientific domains.
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