The first question Dawit Solomon asked us was a bit of a wake up call. “What is soil?” he asked. That simple question, as basic as it seemed, caught me off guard. I realized I really didn’t know much about soil besides what it looked like. I knew that it consisted of minerals, and that plants and animals found a home within it. Other than that, I drew a blank.

Dr. Solomon walked us through the ways that soil affected an ecosystem. And while some things I remembered from my middle school days, such as the carbon cycle, I had never truly considered how these natural processes were related to soil. Something that drew my attention was how much chemistry and material science went into soil science–I always thought it was more related to biology and geology. I was really surprised to see STEM and dark field microscope images on his powerpoint, since these were images I was used to seeing in my chemistry and engineering experiences. But when I think about it, this makes complete sense.

Soil at its most basic level is just made of minerals. And minerals are nothing more than the same elements that compose everything else. When he mentioned how his research dealt with looking at soil at the nanoscale in the CNF, I began to realize how much soil is connected to other disciplines of science that I had never considered. Especially when subjects are studied at such high levels of specialization, we begin to see that everything is just built on information from the past–whether it is humanities, social sciences, pure sciences, arts, engineering–everything is connected, a fact that became evident when he discussed his project with the Abyssinian Phosphorus fertilizer.

Dr. Solomon’s fertilizer truly impressed me with how neatly it provided a solution for two of the world’s greatest, seemingly insurmountable challenges. It not only provides a sustainable method for carbon emission reduction (from a surprising source, no less), but also a feasible method for helping impoverished communities dramatically improve their food production. Using ground cow bones, the team proved that ashes to ashes, dust to dust the saying may be, but from the ashes an unlikely provider for life can be found.