A panel of international wind power experts, in a study designed by the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Erin D. Baker and others, says technology advancements are expected to continue to drive down the cost of wind energy. The survey of the world’s foremost wind power experts led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, anticipates cost reductions of 24 percent to 30 percent by 2030 and 35 percent to 41 percent by 2050, under a median or “best guess” scenario, driven by bigger and more efficient turbines, lower capital and operating costs and other advancements. The findings are...
Research Highlights
Robert Hyers
Professor Robert Hyers of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department has received a $600,000, four-year grant from NASA for a project investigating “Thermophysical Properties and Transport Phenomena Models and Experiments in Reduced Gravity.”
“In plain language, the objective of the project is to advance our understanding of the manufacturing of a family of nonlinear optical crystals,” explains Hyers. “These crystals can be used to construct a wide range of devices, including three-dimensional holographic storage. However, manufacturing problems limit the...
The hits just keep coming for CASA. The Engineering Center for “Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere,” a radar network designed to generate geographically specific, real-time information on severe weather storms, recently inspired a very informative feature article in an unlikely place: on the Dell website.
As the Dell article explained, “Over the past three years, a coalition of public and private institutions [has] come together in...
Maureen Lynch
Principal Investigator Maureen Lynch and Co-Principal Investigator Yahya Modarres-Sadeghi of our Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department have received a three-year, $425,000 National Science Foundation award for a project entitled “Mechano-regulation of bone metastatic cancer: linking cell strain to cell function.” Their research is aimed at relieving one of the most deadly problems related to the epidemic of cancer in modern society: cancers metastasizing into the bones. See NSF description of...
Mario Parente
Mario Parente, an expert in the analysis of hyperspectral images and a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, plays a critical role in a new $1.2-million National Science Foundation grant to apply recent advances in biologically inspired deep learning methods to analyze large amounts of scientific data from Mars. Parente’s research on hyperspectral camera images is being applied to direct the analysis of data gathered by a NASA orbiter, which is currently examining the chemical composition of rocks and dust on Mars.
Unlike traditional cameras, a...
Professor Paul Siqueira of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been selected to serve as one of the Co-Leads for an $800-million collaborative space mission being carried out by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Siqueira was already one of 20 scientists chosen to guide the NASA-ISRO satellite mission to observe Earth and to study “Earth Deformation, Ecosystem Science, and the Dynamics of Ice.”
The Science Definition Team is a group of 20 scientists nationwide who are considered experts in their...
The Daily Hampshire Gazette has published an article about the $6,141,551 grant received by the UMass Transportation Center (UMTC) in the College of Engineering from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT). The large grant will support UMTC’s project to combine and run the state’s Local Technical Assistance Program, the Transportation Training Institute, and the Cooperative Research Program as one unit. The funding runs from...
Offshore Wind Turbine
According to a long article in Wind Systems magazine, a team of researchers that includes two engineers from UMass Amherst is developing a new mooring system for floating offshore wind turbines that uses an integrated network of anchors and lines to hold dozens or even hundreds of turbines in place in the ocean in industrial-scale, offshore wind farms. See UMass...
