Posts Tagged ‘Energy Science’
A. Carlos Fernandez-Pello, 2024 Recipient of the Alfred C. Egerton Gold Medal
In this second installment of a series of articles recognizing the combustion scientists who were honored with medals and awards during the 40th International Symposium – Emphasizing Energy Transition, we will be highlighting A. Carlos Fernandez-Pello (University of California [UC] Berkeley, United States), the 2024 recipient of the Alfred C. Egerton Gold Medal. Prof. Fernandez-Pello was selected to receive this…
Read MoreWildfire scientist Michael Gollner on protecting the East Bay from disaster
As LA continues to burn and a blanket of smoke, ash and toxins covers Southern California, an atmosphere of dread hangs in the air over Berkeley and the fire-prone East Bay. Are we next? The lush landscape of forests with homes nestled into the Berkeley hills is beautiful to behold for many aspiring homeowners. But…
Read MoreHealth, housing and the path ahead: UC Berkeley researchers on the Los Angeles fires
The areas burning in L.A., such as the Santa Monica Mountains, have a long and extensive fire history. Malibu, for instance, has had over 30 wildfires in the last 100 years. Dense vegetation that regrows quickly fuels fires that can spread into neighboring population centers. When Santa Ana wind events occur, winds are channeled through…
Read MoreNASA-funded project offers new insights into fire behavior in space
In the coming years, NASA plans to launch long-duration missions to the Moon and to Mars, where astronauts will spend weeks, months or even years living in spacecraft. Understanding fire behavior in these environments is important to ensuring crew safety, but flammability testing conducted on Earth does not always give a complete picture of how…
Read MoreNew model sheds light on how wildfires spread through communities
California has already recorded more than 6,000 wildfires this year, underscoring the need for better mitigation strategies to reduce their devastating impact. Now, researchers have created a model that may shed light on how these fires spread through communities in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), enabling us to better assess the risks of wildfire and take steps…
Read MoreThree UC Berkeley professors named to NAE
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced today that three UC Berkeley faculty members — Arpad Horvath, Ravi Prasher and Ion Stoica — have been elected to its ranks. Their election brings the number of engineering faculty members in the NAE to 76.
Read MoreBerkeley engineers partner with Siemens Energy on $3.7M DOE project to explore direct air capture for carbon sequestration
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded Siemens Energy, Inc., and partners Constellation Energy, UC Berkeley and Battelle a $3.7 million grant to explore the feasibility of a multi-technology direct air capture (DAC) hub that will extract carbon dioxide directly from the air to help combat climate change. According to the DOE announcement, made Aug. 11, the Teras…
Read More‘Look to the atmosphere’: Campus researchers develop technology to collect clean water from fog
UC Berkeley researchers have developed a method of collecting and purifying water from fog, offering an alternative water source. Microscopic droplets of water can be harvested from fog as it passes through a mesh, which is coated with particles that degrade pollutants in the water, said Thomas Schutzius, assistant professor of mechanical engineering on campus…
Read MoreWhy wildfires are at their deadliest in more than a century
Washington Post: Large wildfires are happening more often because the hazards that trigger them — dry conditions, strong winds, plenty of stuff to burn — are becoming more common, says Michael Gollner, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who heads Berkeley’s Fire Research Lab.
Read MoreScientists develop parallel method for fog harvesting and water treatment
Fog harvesting offers regions devoid of lakes and rivers another source for freshwater, but in urban centers, where water is often scarce, there is the added challenge of air pollution. Now, researchers have developed a simple way to simultaneously collect water from fog and remove harmful contaminants, an advancement that could help provide millions of…
Read MoreME Professor Van Carey to Lead Machine Learning for Energy Tech Workshop at the 2023 ASME Summer Heat Transfer Conference in Washington, DC.
On July 11, 2023 ME Professor Van Carey will lead a workshop at the 2023 Summer Heat Transfer Conference on Use of Machine Learning Tools for Thermophysics and Heat Transfer Research and Energy Technology Development. The workshop will provide a summary of recent innovative uses of machine learning to enhance thermophysics research and develop adaptive…
Read MoreME Associate Professor Michael Gollner Wins Early Career Award in Fire Science
ME Associate Professor Michael Gollner has won the Early Career Award in Fire Science by the International Association of Wildland Fire. This award is to recognize a promising early-career professional who has demonstrated outstanding ability in any field of wildland fire science. Congratulations, Professor Gollner!
Read MoreInternational Fire Safety Consortium Releases Free, Open Access Video Webinar Series on Wildland Fires in Partnership with UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute and UC Berkeley
The International Fire Safety Consortium (IFSC), a network co-led by the University of California, Berkeley that brings together leading higher-education institutions and fire safety research organizations from around the world, has announced the release of a new series of free, open access educational video webinars on wildland fires, in partnership with UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute…
Read MoreNew Faculty Spotlight: Thomas Schutzius
Meet the newest addition to the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s faculty, Dr. Thomas Schutzius! Dr. Schutzius joins us as an Assistant Professor in January 2023.
Click to learn more about Dr. Schutzius and his research.
Read MoreCITRIS researchers to help Northern California communities reduce wildfire risk with dynamic modeling and serious games
With $2.5 million from the National Science Foundation, an interdisciplinary, multicampus University of California research team is partnering with agencies and community organizations in the Bay Area to help residents respond to natural disasters more quickly — and more safely. The 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and laid waste to more than 240…
Read MoreBerkeley Lab Scientists Develop a Cool New Method of Refrigeration
Adding salt to a road before a winter storm changes when ice will form. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have applied this basic concept to develop a new method of heating and cooling. The technique, which they have named “ionocaloric cooling,” is described in a paper published Dec. 23 in…
Read MoreME Joint Professor Somayeh Sojoudi and ME PhD Student Elizabeth Glista Win “Best of the Best” Paper Award at the 2022 IEEE PES GM
ME Joint Professor Somayeh Sojoudi and ME PhD Student Elizabeth Glista have won a “Best of the Best” Conference Paper Award at the 2022 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting. The paper, titled “A MILP for Optimal Measurement Choice in Robust Power Grid State Estimation,” was selected by the Power System Operation, Planning, and…
Read MoreA Framework for a Hydrogen Economy
Ravi Prasher is an Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He has more than 20 years of experience in working in R&D in large industry, startup, government, and academia. He was one of the first program directors at ARPA-E in the US Department of Energy. Prasher has published more than 100 papers on…
Read MoreUC wildfire symposium focuses on wildland-urban interface
UC scientists and researchers discussed fire in the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, at the second UC wildfire symposium Wednesday. UC President Michael Drake began by explaining what was discussed in the first wildfire symposium before touching on the WUI, where the built environment comes in contact with the natural lands. “Here in California, we are seeing firsthand…
Read MoreCapstone Project Profile: Using Wildfire Simulations as Predictors for Economical Risk Management
Wildfires have become an annual destructive force with the 2018 California wildfires witnessing the tragic loss of life and $3.5 billion in damages, which unraveled communities and motivated new outlooks to safety and liability. Our solution harnesses the novel firefighting technique of real time low computation wildfire prediction simulations, through a particle based representation of…
Read MoreTracking and Fighting Fires on Earth and Beyond
Mechanical engineer Michael Gollner and his graduate student, Sriram Bharath Hariharan, from the University of California, Berkeley, recently traveled to NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. There, they dropped burning objects in a deep shaft and study how fire whirls form in microgravity. The Glenn Center hosts a Zero Gravity Research Facility,…
Read MoreWhy ‘Fire is Normal’ in California and How Communities Can Change to Cut Risks
Michael Gollner, UC Berkeley Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the risks of wildfires on the West Coast and how residents can adjust to stay safe.
Read MoreNew California Fire Science Seminar Series
This new online seminar series will cover the breadth of wildland fire research relevant to California and introduce researchers to new topics and research groups across the state. Topics will include fire weather, wildfire risk, fire ecology, remote sensing, emissions, fire dynamics, fire modeling and public health. Featuring many early-career researchers, this series is aimed at…
Read MoreUC Berkeley researchers receive grant for biopreservation research, center establishment
UC Berkeley researchers — in collaboration with researchers from the University of Minnesota, Massachusetts General Hospital and UC Riverside — won a National Science Foundation award Aug. 4 of $26 million over the next five years to fund a new center for biopreservation research.
Read MoreME Professor Michael Frenklach Wins Jürgen Warnatz Gold Medal
ME Professor Michael Frenklach has been awarded the Jürgen Warnatz Gold Medal by the Combustion Institute. The gold medal recognizes exceptional scientific contributions having a major impact on combustion applications or combustion research; bestowed biennially to one scientist during the International Symposium on Combustion. The gold medal is named after Jürgen Warnatz (1944-2007), a former…
Read MoreME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner to Receive 2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award
ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner has been selected as a co-recipient of the 2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. The annual award, co-sponsored by Elsevier and The Combustion Institute, recognizes up to two early career researchers who have demonstrated excellence in fundamental or applied combustion science and have achieved a significant advancement in their…
Read MoreME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner to Give Plenary Lecture on Wildland Fires
ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner will be giving a Plenary Lecture on Wildland Fires at the 2020 Spring Meeting of the Western States Section of The Combustion Institute (WSSCI). This year, the meeting will be held on March 23-24 at Stanford University. The spring meetings bring together researchers, scientists and engineers from academia, national labs…
Read MoreME Professors Jyh-Yuan Chen, Robert Dibble, and Michael Frenklach Elected Fellows of the Combustion Institute
Members of the international combustion community recognized by their peers as distinguished for outstanding contributions to combustion, whether it be in research or in applications, may be designated Fellows of The Combustion Institute. This lifetime honorific title confers no special rights, privileges or duties. Fellows are active participants in The Combustion Institute, as evidenced by…
Read MoreWhat Are Fire Whirls? Researchers Examine the Behavior of These Tornado-Like Fire Columns
In a fire whirl, rising hot air twists flames into a towering pillar. Although fire whirls in wildlands are normally small, fire whirls can grow large and destructive, forming into a burning tornado, as in the case of the 2018 Carr fire in California. In this video, Assistant Professor Michael Gollner explains the characteristics of…
Read MoreHeat Energy Leaps Through Empty Space, Thanks to Quantum Weirdness
If you use a vacuum-insulated thermos to help keep your coffee hot, you may know it’s a good insulator because heat energy has a hard time moving through empty space. Vibrations of atoms or molecules, which carry thermal energy, simply can’t travel if there are no atoms or molecules around. But a new study by…
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