Tag Archives: materials science

Governor Inslee To Address Washington State As Global Hub for Alternative Fuels

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On May 20, the Consortium for Hydrogen And Renewably Generated E-Fuels (CHARGE) is offering its inaugural conference to address critical materials challenges in the energy and transportation sectors. As hydrogen and e-fuels are deployed as alternative fuels, several organizations are joining forces to make Washington State a global hub for commercializing new fuels and technologies.   

Save the Date: Thursday, May 20 from 8AM to 1PM.

Learn more about CHARGE.

JCDREAM CHARGE Conference visual explaining how renewable and alternative fuels are the future of energy.
Image Courtesy of JCDREAM

The following Washington State University (WSU) centers will act as founding members of the CHARGE Consortium:  

  • JCDREAM – Joint Center for Deployment and Research in Earth Abundant Materials 
  • HYPER – Hydrogen Properties for Energy Research 
  • ESIC – Energy Systems Innovation Center 
  • ASCENT – Aviation Sustainability Center

The consortium seeks commercialization partners in the following sectors (the survey request linked below is about identifying potential partners for pilot projects and programs): 

  • Transportation: marine, aviation, shipping, trucking, and personal transport OEMs with a focus on long term deep decarbonization 
  • Harvesting: agriculture, fishing, logging, and mining with the goal of long-term sustainability and circular carbon economies 
  • Cloud Computing: companies interested in alternative fuels for decarbonizing the cloud 
  • Utilities: focus on deploying and managing low cost or excess clean energy assets towards hydrogen or fuel production which is sold or used for long term energy storage and reintroduced to the grid  
  • Process Engineering: firms dedicated to innovative chemical engineering and process scaleup 
  • Chemical and Materials Manufacturing: companies that will commercialize new processes for hydrogen or fuel/chemical production and materials needed to enable efficient processing 

If you are interested in the CHARGE event, this page shares the details and asks you to take a short survey which will be used to connect potential collaborators around new pilot projects, including opportunities around public and private funding. 

More info:

MatEdU News wrote about the critical materials shortage last year: JCDREAM Drives Innovation For Earth-Abundant Materials:

“Around the globe, world leaders are issuing calls to action on the shortage of critical materials, also known as rare earth elements (REE), that impact everything from our cell phones and computer hard drives to military defense capabilities. The United States, the European Union, and Japan have all raised concerns for materials shortages and supply chain risks.”

We also included them in a post about the Race to the Ocean Floor that highlighted ocean explorations and plans for mining rare earth elements there. 

If you are wondering about the need for shifting from critical materials to sustainable materials, read this JCDREAM blog post on The Importance of Materials Science Education & Workforce Development.

Materials Education (MatEdU) Improves And Expands As Online Resource Center

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Screenshot of Materials Education homepage

Hey, we’re back. Actually, we never left, but MaterialsEducation.org (MatEdU) is now a National Science Foundation-funded project. We recently received a new NSF grant award to continue our work for another three years with a similar, but enhanced charter.

 

MatEdU is and has been focused on building a national repository, a resource center for materials technology education that creates and compiles instructional resources for the Materials Science (MatSci) community. For those of you who have used our site, you have downloaded and used our wide variety of instructional materials including labs, hands-on demonstrations, modules and papers, which are then integrated into a variety of courses, classroom settings, and even in industry. Through peer reviewed and classroom tested efforts, the MatEdU collection continued to improve and grow.

 

The world of materials science continues to radically influence how we develop technology solutions, across almost every aspect of the material world. We are each witnessing these breakthroughs in new nanoscale, biological, smart, and composite materials. 

 

Serving Materials Science Technicians & Workers

 

The long-term goal of the project is to ensure that materials technology education meets industry standards and produces technicians who are well prepared for work across different manufacturing sectors. To achieve this goal, the project will develop and share online resources to support the materials technological education of students and incumbent workers.

 

For this new project, MatEdU will continue to improve and expand national access to an online collection of high-quality instructional resources including competency-based modules, presentations, labs, and demonstrations; to implement dissemination strategies that promote increased awareness of online resources, support partnerships, and expand strategic opportunities for the materials science education community; and to leverage the expertise of collaborating national partners to achieve strategic scalability of instructional resources. 

 

During this project, technician skill gaps will be identified, instructional modules that address the skill gaps will be developed, and a handbook on materials technology education will be  expanded through a joint effort of network members. The project evaluation will provide insights on how the instructional resources impact materials science education. 

 

MatEdU News launches

 

In addition, as we have done with our sister project, TEAMM, where we created the AM News page to capture and promote the work of national partners and allies, MatEdU is launching the Materials “MatEdU News” page to do some of the same specifically within materials science and education. Please share MatEdU News with your colleagues and students or any professional who has a deep interest in materials. Stay tuned for more updates and news. 

 

This project is funded by the NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, DUE #2000347, that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation’s economy.