First, I will outline our work on overcoming barriers to desert rehabilitation for urban greening, landscaping, and regional food security. In arid regions, freshwater is scarce, sandy soils lose water and fertilizers rapidly, which stifles plant growth. Our team has developed two complementary solutions: (i) Superhydrophobic Sand (SHS)¹ — a plastic-free, bio-inspired mulch that cuts evaporative water loss from topsoil by ~80%; (ii) CarboSoil² — an engineered biochar that greatly enhances nutrient and water retention in sandy soils. I will share our translational journey from materials invention and characterization to multi-year field trials with food crops and native plants in collaboration with industry partners. Results show SHS and CarboSoil can dramatically improve irrigation and fertilizer-use efficiency in hot, dry, sandy environments. Terraxy LLC, the startup I co-founded, is now scaling Carbosoil production to 6,000 tons/year for regional sustainability projects.

Next, I will discuss our investigation into controversial claims that hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) forms spontaneously at the air–water interface in microdroplets^3-5 — a phenomenon that would upend fundamental physical chemistry and impact fields from cloud chemistry to green synthesis. We tested H₂O₂ formation in sprayed and condensed microdroplets under varied flow rates, air compositions, pH, and salt content. Our findings show that the effect is not due to the air–water interface or microdroplet geometry⁶. Instead, H₂O₂ originates from the reduction of dissolved oxygen at the solid–water interface⁷. Within a 50 nM detection limit, no H₂O₂ was detected in oxygen-free conditions.