Professor Lei Zuo presents “Energy Harvesting: From Self-Powered Control to Powering the Blue Economy”

Join Zoom Meeting | https://ucla.zoom.us/j/241944736 | Meeting ID: 241 944 736

Abstract: By converting environmental energy into electricity, energy harvesting research has attracted extensive recent attention and enabled many promising applications like self-powered wireless sensors and wearable electronics. Energy harvesting is also being extended to large power scale, including marine and hydrokinetic energy. In this talk, I will briefly overview energy harvesting at micro- and milli-watt levels from a historical perspective, then present our unique efforts and recent results on large-scale energy harvesting, focusing on interdisciplinary challenges in intelligent materials, vibration dynamics, mechatronics design, control systems, and power electronics. The topics include energy harvesting from vehicles and infrastructures, powering the blue economy from ocean wave and current energy, and passive adaptive energy harvesting for internet of things (IoTs). Finally, I will summarize the talk with my vision of energy harvesting research in four promising directions.

Bio Sketch: Lei Zuo is currently the Robert E. Hord Jr. Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech. He returned to academia in 2008 after working in industry for four years following his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He is the Director of the NSF IUCRC Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems, an industry consortium with sites at Virginia Tech, Columbia, and Penn State University. Zuo’s research interests are design, dynamics, control and manufacturing of energy harvesting systems, with applications to ocean renewable energy, the water–energy–food nexus, self-powered control, and self-sustainable sensors. Zuo received the 2017 ASME Leonardo da Vinci Award for his “eminent achievement in the design”. ASME recognized him as “a pioneering researcher in energy harvesting, especially at larger energy scale” with its 2015 Thar Energy Design Award and named him as an ASME Fellow in 2016. He also won national R&D 100 Awards (2015 and 2011) and the 2014 SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award. He has published well over 100 journal papers and 160 papers in conferences. His research has been funded by NSF, DOE, DOT, ONR, the US Army, the EPA, and several other government and industry sponsors.

Date/Time:
Date(s) - Mar 23, 2020
11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Location: