News
Brandon Dunham
Chemical Engineering (ChE) doctoral student Brandon Dunham has received a highly competitive $1,000 Graduate School Predissertation Research Grant from UMass Amherst to support one phase of his dissertation in progress, tentatively titled "Strategies to Improve the Performance and Stability of Planar, p-i-n Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Perovskite Solar Cells." Dunham’s dissertation research will investigate if he can inexpensively improve the efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells, a next-generation solar material. If successful, says Dunham, his research “could change the way the world sees solar power forever.”
Shannon Roberts
Shannon Roberts of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department and Eric Gonzales of the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department were two of the campus experts who spoke about autonomous vehicles at a May 29 “listening session” convened by the Governor’s Commission on the Future of Transportation and held in the UMass Amherst Cape Cod Lounge at the Student Union. Roberts spoke about “Human Factor Needs in an Autonomous Vehicle World,” while Gonzales focused on “Autonomous Vehicles for Ride Sharing.”
See media coverage: Gazette, WWLP-TV 22, News Office release.
Matthew Lackner
Professors Matthew Lackner and Erin Baker of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department published a very illuminating essay in The Conversation on May 15 about why the offshore wind energy industry will soon vastly expand and why Massachusetts is one of the states that is leading the way. Lackner and Baker said that market forces are helping the development of offshore wind energy, while states on the East Coast are preparing long-range plans to develop wind energy to replace fossil-fuel and nuclear-power generation.
See additional media coverage: Business Insider; Salon.com
