Washington Engineer - April 2011 Video Message
Read Matt's message
Hi, I'm Matt O'Donnell, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. Welcome to the spring edition of Washington Engineer.
New Dawn for Solar Energy
I want to start by talking about an event we recently had on campus which was a lecture, New Dawn for Solar Energy. For those who missed it, this lecture is available at the UWTV website, or UWTV.org. At this lecture, we introduced and formally launched our new institute for Advanced Materials and Energy, or AME. This institute seeks solutions using molecular engineering and nanoscale technologies to address the world's energy challenges. The talk highlighted the extraordinary work going on in the College of Engineering, our collaborators in the College of Arts and Sciences, and across the U of W to advance solar energy technologies.
Within this initiative, we're focusing on three major aspects of solar energy systems. First of all is clean generation through organic photovoltaics or solar cells; efficient energy storage through nanoscale engineered materials within ultracapacitors and batteries; and, finally, for efficient uses of energy in solid-state lighting using the same molecularly engineered materials.
Advancing Smart Grid Technologies
I'm really excited in this issue that you also learn about the smart grid programs in the college. Two things have happened in the last year to really launch this initiative. First, we are one of the nodes in the regional smart grid demonstration project that will bring smart grid technologies to campus. We received about $10 million from the Department of Energy to put together a smart grid infrastructure on campus. Coupled with that is the recent hiring of professor Daniel Kirschen as the Close Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He will be leading our efforts in the smart grid area. As part of a launch of our larger-scale programs, we will hold a summit in June which will bring together regional leaders from industry, utilities, academics, and the national laboratories to discuss ways to make the Northwest the leader in smart grid technologies.
Environmental Innovation Challenge & Technology Commercialization
Also exciting in this issue is you'll read about our programs in technical entrepreneurship. This year, we revitalized our total program in technology commercialization as a multi-course sequence to introduce our students to commercializing technologies and bringing technologies into societal use. As part of this core sequence, we are participating along with the College of the Environment and the Foster School of Business in the Environmental Innovation Challenge. These are teams of students that address issues in green technology.
This year, as was the same in the last couple of years, the top two award winners were driven by engineering students and we are very proud of that. The first was Voltaic, a team driven mostly with mechanical engineering students, which developed a technology to convert combustion engine drive trains to those that can be driven by electric motors. And the second, Potavida, was a group of bioengineering, chemical engineering, and computer scienceelectrical engineering students who came up with a technology to test water safety.
So, as I think you can tell from this issue, we're very excited about our cross-college and cross-campus collaborations having real impact on our society. So we welcome you to this edition of Washington Engineer and hope you will enjoy reading it. Thank you very much.