Departmental News

Participating in the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s 2017 University Design Challenge, a team of UNC Charlotte engineering students received honorable mention for its ‘navigation intent and size/form factor’ work. The purposed of the competition was to help the Air Force solve a critical problem for the nation’s military and Special Operations community.

UNC Charlotte researchers have worked in the field of freeform optics for more than 10 years. In that time, numerous advances have been made that are now creating a whole new world of optical applications and fundamentally changing the way optical devices are designed. Undergraduate students, graduate students and alumni from the Lee College of Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences are working collaboratively on research and application of these new technologies.

Through his undergraduate studies, senior design project, graduate thesis, summer internships, a job and now a position as a research faculty member, the one constant for Dr. Joseph Owen has been freeform optics. He has learned about them, made them, applied them, measured them and is now researching how to advance them to the next level.

Arnab Baruah was recently announced as the first recipient of the Bharatkumar S. Joshi Memorial Scholarship, named in memory of Associate Professor Dr. Bharatkumar S. Joshi of the William States Lee College of Engineering.

Future space missions will reach greater distances and span longer durations. Design of spacecraft and habitats to better accommodate habitability functions will be more important than ever. To achieve this, mission planners and spacecraft designers now need tools to help them better define habitable volume and identify mission and programmatic risks. Volume directly drives mass and cost, so well-informed estimates early in the design process are key.

Established in December 2016, the Center for Advanced Multimodal Mobility Solutions and Education (CAMMSE) is now up and running with numerous projects underway. UNC Charlotte is the lead in the multi-institutional initiative, which is funded by a $7.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

To improve the way solar power is integrated and distributed to the grid using grid level batteries, Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Dr. Sukumar Kamalasadan and his students have been performing research at Duke Energy’s photovoltaic and battery storage system testbed in Catawba County since 2013. The research has developed and quantified a number of cost-saving measures, and soon the value-management system will be integrated in the field for managing the solar power farm.

To more directly engage energy engineering companies with its people and programs, the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC) at UNC Charlotte has established a new affiliates program.

The Lee College of Engineering Rocketry Team placed fifth out of 50 schools at the 2017 NASA Student Launch competition. The event took place at the Marshall Space Flight Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, during the week of April 5-9, with the competition flight on April 8.

The UTC Foundation, the charitable arm of the Utilities Technology Council (UTC), presented its first grant to the Energy Production & Infrastructure Center (EPIC) at UNC Charlotte. The contribution was given at an awards dinner on Wednesday, May 10th, during the UTC Telecom & Technology conference in Charlotte. The UTC Foundation chose EPIC for its inaugural donation due to the outstanding Smart Grid technology and telecommunications work of the school, which aligns perfectly with the charity’s vision of supporting and promoting educational institutions and programs that connect students with utilities and critical infrastructure-related interests.