Caitlin Noonan ’26, a chemical engineering major at the University of Connecticut and a 2025 Goldwater Scholar, is turning dining hall food scraps into a material that pulls carbon dioxide out of the air. Backed by a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund award, she collects waste from South Dining Hall, dries and grinds it, then applies slow pyrolysis and 900°C steam activation to produce a highly porous activated carbon — a cleaner route than chemical activation. Growing up on Long Island worried about what was in her tap water, she launched her first research project on harmful algal blooms in high school. Advisor Julia Valla calls the work both innovative and squarely aimed at major environmental challenges. Noonan plans a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and a career as an R1 faculty researcher.