News

Congratulations to Professor Lei Zhou on her two new grants from NSF!
– Next-Generation Safe and Dexterous Robot Hands using High-Torque Direct-Drive Actuation
– Wafer-Scale Ultrathin Layered Device Array Assembly through a Precision Soft-Robotic Stamp Transfer Process

Professors Chirag Gupta and Shubhra Pasayat, together with Professor Daniel Ludois, have received a $1.5 Million NSF ASCENT grant to utilize wide bandgap semiconductor materials to develop an ultra-efficient, high-voltage transistor.

Over a hundred years ago, the English economist William Stanley Jevons keenly observed that technological advances that increase energy efficiency leads to further increased energy consumption and not the other way around, backed by impeccable data. In this talk, Prof. Giri will review Jevons’ observations and link it to present observations.

WEMPEC is one of the co-sponsors of this year’s Makeathon at the UW Makerspace. Join in and develop a product or system that will mitigate the impact of escalating high temperatures on marginalized populations (those experiencing housing insecurity, individuals with disabilities, stray animals, etc.)!

Lei Zhou uses her interdisciplinary precision mechatronics research as a powerful tool for solving problems in various application areas, including semiconductor manufacturing equipment and robotics. With a systems focus, she develops novel and high-performance mechatronic solutions by exploiting the synergy between precision machine design, electric machines, and control algorithms.

Thomas A. Lipo Assistant Professor Jinia Roy, who has academic, government and industry research experience, is bringing a broad expertise in power conversion to WEMPEC. At WEMPEC, Jinia says she wants to continue with her wide portfolio of previous research interests and hopes to also work on the power conversion needed within electric vehicles. She also plans to explore applications where pulsed power technologies are gaining traction like laser, radar, and other industrial processes including water treatment and ozone generation.

As part of her Clinic Electrification Project, which aims to create a free, open-source toolkit any NGO or rural healthcare clinic can use to optimally size a renewable energy network, or microgrid, for their area, Rebecca Alcock (Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering) and WEMPEC Ph.D. student Rafael Castillo Sierra traveled to Tezhumke, Colombia, to do a case study on how this toolkit performs.