Mingzhen Lu
@mingzhenlu.bsky.social
Always curious, frequently clueless, constantly tinkering. Systems everywhere.
http://mingzhenlu-lab.com
http://mingzhenlu-lab.com
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Mingzhen Lu
@mingzhenlu.bsky.social
· Oct 17
Environmental Studies
Applications and all supporting materials must be submitted online by 5PM Eastern Time. If a listed deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or U.S. federal holiday, then the next business day will be the actual deadline.
gsas.nyu.edu
Applications Now Open for Fall 2026 Cohorts
Apply by December 1, 2025 gsas.nyu.edu/admissions/a...
Apply by December 1, 2025 gsas.nyu.edu/admissions/a...
Reposted by Mingzhen Lu
Really excited about launching the universe of "Grassy Trees" to diversify plant growth forms in forest ecology! Bamboo, palms, and bananas are nature-based solutions that have already been working for thousands of years in many cultures. We just need to SEE them now.
Online now: Grassy trees: the neglected hybrids for sustainability
Grassy trees: the neglected hybrids for sustainability
Grassy trees – large forest-adapted monocots such as bamboo, palm, and bananas – combine grass-like rapid growth with tree-like canopy dominance. Their ambiguous status between woody and herbaceous plants has led to research neglect. Recognizing them as a distinct growth form is key to harnessing their potential as nature-based solutions for sustainability.
dlvr.it
October 24, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Really excited about launching the universe of "Grassy Trees" to diversify plant growth forms in forest ecology! Bamboo, palms, and bananas are nature-based solutions that have already been working for thousands of years in many cultures. We just need to SEE them now.
Reposted by Mingzhen Lu
Our new paper is out! "Grassy trees"--our best effort to name bamboo, palms, bananas that are culturally accepted as trees, function like trees, but grow like grasses! Once they are in your head, you see them everywhere. Join us to explore their power! #SustainableDevelopment
October 24, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Our new paper is out! "Grassy trees"--our best effort to name bamboo, palms, bananas that are culturally accepted as trees, function like trees, but grow like grasses! Once they are in your head, you see them everywhere. Join us to explore their power! #SustainableDevelopment
Well deserved! Complexity, a guided tour is a must read for anyone curious about complexity science, evolution, algorithms. Not only it provides so many pointers to foundational work, the writing is so clear that it made me a layman of computer science losing sleep thinking of Robby the robot.
Congratulations to SFI Professor Melanie Mitchell (@melaniemitchell.bsky.social), a winner of the 2025 National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications. Mitchell is recognized for her writing and podcasts on AI and how we think about intelligence.
Melanie Mitchell receives award for science communication
SFI Resident Professor Melanie Mitchell has received a 2025 Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Th...
www.santafe.edu
October 24, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Well deserved! Complexity, a guided tour is a must read for anyone curious about complexity science, evolution, algorithms. Not only it provides so many pointers to foundational work, the writing is so clear that it made me a layman of computer science losing sleep thinking of Robby the robot.
Applications Now Open for Fall 2026 Cohorts
Apply by December 1, 2025 gsas.nyu.edu/admissions/a...
Apply by December 1, 2025 gsas.nyu.edu/admissions/a...
Environmental Studies
Applications and all supporting materials must be submitted online by 5PM Eastern Time. If a listed deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or U.S. federal holiday, then the next business day will be the actual deadline.
gsas.nyu.edu
October 17, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Applications Now Open for Fall 2026 Cohorts
Apply by December 1, 2025 gsas.nyu.edu/admissions/a...
Apply by December 1, 2025 gsas.nyu.edu/admissions/a...
Fun facts: (1) globally each city resident shares city mass that is >5000 times of their body (2) cites analogous to Russian doll? economies of scale exists across nested scales. Sublinearity seems to be the glue that enables ever increasing urban complexity. arxiv.org/abs/2507.03960
Nested economies of scale in city mass
A longstanding puzzle in urban science is whether there's an intrinsic match between human populations and the mass of their built environments. Previous findings have revealed various urban propertie...
arxiv.org
July 9, 2025 at 5:46 AM
Fun facts: (1) globally each city resident shares city mass that is >5000 times of their body (2) cites analogous to Russian doll? economies of scale exists across nested scales. Sublinearity seems to be the glue that enables ever increasing urban complexity. arxiv.org/abs/2507.03960
[3/3] Studying different forms of urban waste can open new doors toward carbon neutrality. It is fair to argue the study of waste represents a novel frontier in global biogeochemistry research.
December 2, 2024 at 5:53 PM
[3/3] Studying different forms of urban waste can open new doors toward carbon neutrality. It is fair to argue the study of waste represents a novel frontier in global biogeochemistry research.
[2/3] Landfills contribute to roughly one-tenth of global methane emissions, yet their standing carbon stock remains poorly characterized. In 346 Chinese cities alone, we estimate the landfill standing stock to be 0.5 Gigaton—equivalent to the weight of 50,000 Eiffel Towers.
December 2, 2024 at 5:51 PM
[2/3] Landfills contribute to roughly one-tenth of global methane emissions, yet their standing carbon stock remains poorly characterized. In 346 Chinese cities alone, we estimate the landfill standing stock to be 0.5 Gigaton—equivalent to the weight of 50,000 Eiffel Towers.
Congratulations to Shijun for this new publication: Carbon-negative transition by utilizing overlooked carbon in waste landfills. We explored an overlooked aspect of the global carbon cycle: carbon stored in modern city landfills. #NovelFrontiers #GlobalBiogeochemistry #UrbanWaste #IndustrialEcology
December 2, 2024 at 5:50 PM
Congratulations to Shijun for this new publication: Carbon-negative transition by utilizing overlooked carbon in waste landfills. We explored an overlooked aspect of the global carbon cycle: carbon stored in modern city landfills. #NovelFrontiers #GlobalBiogeochemistry #UrbanWaste #IndustrialEcology