But who’s going to make sure all the equipment is working properly and negotiate with the gas companies? … “In this day and age, it’s all case by case,” says Scott Samuelsen, a professor and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center and the Advanced Power and Energy Program at the University of California, Irvine.
“We continue to work with SoCalGas on transforming several parts of its gas system for introducing some percentage of hydrogen initially and transforming it for eventually carrying all hydrogen,” said Jack Brouwer, UCI engineering professor and hydrogen [National] Fuel Cell Research [Center] director. UCI’s work with Sempra’s SoCalGas utility involves determining what impacts hydrogen-natural gas blends would have on various gas-fired appliances and end-uses.
The modular unit was designed and built by a group of 30 students from UC Irvine and Orange Coast College as part of the inaugural Orange County Sustainability Decathlon. The competition brought together college students to not only get hands-on architecture experience, but to do so with affordability and sustainability in mind. … “The ADU gifted from UCI and OCC is going to give us the ability to expand our program. Currently with just the home that we have, we can serve up to nine individuals, both male and female,” Alfa Hernandez, program director at HIS-OC, said.
Newsha Ajami, [UCI alumna, Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering and] chief development officer for research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, adds that it’s especially important to capture stormwater as droughts are becoming more common. “Water, if we protect it as soon as it hits the ground and keep it clean, we can actually reuse it and repurpose it in various ways, especially during the wet years that we get,” Ajami says.
With forecasters predicting the most powerful storm in a decade in Northern California this weekend — and more precipitation likely throughout the state in the coming days — UC Irvine engineers are hoping researchers, hydrologists and weather enthusiasts will make the most of their iRain mobile app.
“This emerging fusion of the AI and engineering fields represents a profound opportunity to make breakthrough research advances as well as to address some of the most pressing challenges facing society today,” said Pramod Khargonekar, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Irvine, and chair of the visioning event.
Engineers at the University of California say they have demonstrated how easy it would be to snoop on biotech companies making synthetic DNA…. The researchers demonstrated their spying technique on the Applied Biosystems 3400 DNA Synthesizer, a widely used older model….
Iryna Zenyuk, Ph.D., is a researcher, associate professor of [chemical] and biomolecular engineering, and associate director of the University of California, Irvine National Fuel Cell Research Center. … Dr. Zenyuk also sees a major shift toward fuel cells for trucks. “For long-haul truck drivers and their employers, time and every pound of payload is money,” she said. “Heavy-duty trucks are virtually impossible to decarbonize with batteries.
Holmes Endowed Fellowship
“We were all full of enthusiasm when the agreement was signed, but unfortunately things went in the opposite direction,” says Soroosh Sorooshian, an Iranian–American hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine. He was one of hundreds of scientists who participated in the NASEM workshops. “God knows what happens next.”
“Fire has made us civilized, but we still don’t understand it fully,” said Tirtha Banerjee, [UCI engineering assistant professor] …. “Scientists have been “just completely caught off guard about how fast things are changing,” said James T. Randerson, [UCI Chancellor’s Professor, Earth system science]. … Banerjee and his team of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers flew their drone repeatedly over the area, mapping it …..
“There are more than a billion people living in extreme poverty, with many of them living in megacities and large urban centres. These are people struggling to survive,” said Simon Michael Papalexiou, … [UCI] environmental engineer and the lead author of the study. … Amir AghaKouchak, a civil engineer and co-author of the study, said growing urban heat risk will require city authorities to think about new measures save lives - something some are already putting in place.
To reduce reliance on fossil fuels in industries where electricity is impractical, unreliable or too expensive, California is building a massive “hydrogen hub” to generate a steady supply of an alternative fuel with no carbon emissions — bringing us closer, say advocates, to a completely green future. “It’s the beginning of the investment that must be made if we are to meet our zero-emission policy goals,” said UC Irvine engineering professor Jack Brouwer, director of the university’s Clean Energy Institute and an interim director for business development on the hub’s leadership team.
A disappearing California beach is partly behind the weekslong closure of one of Amtrak's busiest routes in the latest example of how changing weather patterns and eroding shorelines pose a threat to the state's coastal rail corridor. … “That stretch of the coast has really lost a significant amount of sand over the last decade or two,” said Brett Sanders, professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of California, Irvine.
A group of MIT student engineers have won a competition to transform Space X co-founder Elon Musk’s transportation idea into reality. The group competed against 160 different universities from 16 countries to design a pod that would transport people ... speeds close to 700 miles per hour. The University of California, Irvine finished fifth in that competition. The top teams will build their pods and they’ll test them at the world's first Hyperloop test track being built adjacent to Space X headquarters in Hawthorne.
Over the past decade, most California counties have seen double the area burned compared with the area burned in the previous decade. … It’s not necessarily the case that more large fires are burning now than in previous decades, but the ones that do ignite are charring through much more land, according to Tirtha Banerjee, a professor and wildfire researcher at the University of California, Irvine. “What that says to me is that fires are getting more intense and more severe, and behaving in more unexpected ways,” he said.
“Every engineering student should do a project like this,” said Adora Tadros, an engineering student from UC Irvine working with about 60 teammates on the HyperXite team. … “What we’re doing is really pushing ourselves,” Tadros said. “To be as competitive as we are just proves how much you can accomplish when you organize and set your minds to something.”
