The Ohio State University

Researchers have invented a new material that will make cars even more efficient, by converting heat wasted through engine exhaust into electricity.

In the current issue of the journal Science, they describe a material with twice the efficiency of anything currently on the market.

The same technology could work in power generators and heat pumps, said project leader Joseph Heremans, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanotechnology at Ohio State University.

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) has announced that William Rich, professor emeritus in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The Ohio State University, has won the AIAA 2008 Plasmadynamics and Lasers Award. The award will be presented to Dr. Rich at an awards luncheon on June 24 at the 39th AIAA Plasmadynamics and Lasers Conference in Seattle, Washington. He will also present the plenary award lecture on his work at the conference.

A team of Ohio State College of Engineering students has placed third in the nation in a four-year, U.S. Department of Energy competition to improve automotive technology in engine efficiency and emissions. 

The Ohio State Reverb was announced among the winners at the conclusion of the Challenge X competition yesterday at the nation's capitol. In addition, the Department of Energy named Ohio State as one of 16 universities selected to participate in the next competition, called EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge, in which students must re-engineer a 2009 Saturn Vue to achieve improved fuel economy and reduced emissions while retaining the vehicle's performance and consumer appeal.  

Carol Smidts, professor in nuclear engineering, will serve as the associate editor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Reliability. The journal is one of the top two journals in reliability engineering.

Marcelo Dapino, associate professor in mechanical engineering, has also been appointed to serve as the associate editor for the Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control.

Kenton Williams, a graduating senior in mechanical engineering, has been awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship that will support three years of his doctoral studies.

He conducted undergraduate research through the Ohio State Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) working on a computer simulation of a biped robot using MatLab and C++ software, with Jim Schmiedeler, assistant professor in mechanical engineering. Williams studied the use of Passivity Based Control to regulate the total energy of the system. He is interested in studying robotics and bio-mimicry while pursuing his doctoral degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after completing his undergraduate degree at Ohio State this coming spring.