UC Irvine is home to the National Fuel Cell Research Center, which has been testing hydrogen for years. The center is led by Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor at UCI who’s studied hydrogen for 25 years. Brouwer’s team has worked with SoCalGas on other projects, and he told me this next test seemed a natural fit. … SoCalGas hopes to install an electrolyzer at UC Irvine to make hydrogen by shooting an electrical current (powered by the state grid) through water and splitting hydrogen from oxygen.

“A consortium of physicians, scientists, and engineers led by the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Texas at Austin directed us [to] go and make the simplest possible ventilator,” says Virgin Orbit vice president for special projects Will Pomerantz. “We essentially took all the people who were going to be building next year’s rockets and said, ‘Next year’s rockets can probably wait a little bit—you’re going to be building or testing ventilators.’ ” Read More

Foundation Alloy, a vertically integrated metal part production platform, announced it has raised a $10.5 million seed funding round ….

“Real-world deployment of bidirectional charging is essential for gathering the data, and the technical and customer adaptation insights needed to scale V2H deployment across the grid,” said Prof. Scott Samuelsen, project director and founding director of the UCI Advanced Power and Energy Program. Read More

Amir AghaKouchak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine, said climate change has exacerbated the problem, but the biggest issue is how water use is governed. “This narrative of climate change is responsible, to be honest, is not really accurate,” AghaKouchak said, adding that Iran has weathered drought throughout its history. Read More