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Uma Chowdhry, senior vice president and chief technology officer, discussed emerging technologies at EmTech 2009.

The recent Emerging Technologies (EmTech) 2009 conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology featured a presentation by Uma Chowdhry, DuPont senior vice president and chief science and technology officer.

Uma said the challenge for new energy solutions is cost competitiveness.  Alternate energy sources must achieve cost parity with sources based on fossil fuels.

During a keynote panel discussion on The Future of Energy, Uma said the world is faced with unprecedented concurrent challenges arising from:

• The global financial crisis.
• Remarkable growth in worldwide energy demand.
• Rapidly increasing levels of greenhouse gases that could challenge civilization.

“It takes patient investment and sustained commitment to partnerships among government, industry and academia to harness the full potential of scientific discovery and bring it to commercial reality,” Uma said. “Why are clean technologies so hard? Simply because they require more technology breakthroughs combined with an appetite for large capital investment to scale up.”

Based on global megatrends, Uma also explained that DuPont is focused on delivering market-driven science to innovative industries that bring true value and societal change.  These four megatrends are increasing food productivity, protecting lives and the environment, as well as decreasing dependence on fossil fuels and growth in emerging regions.

Click here to see Uma’s presentation.