/NSF REU/..

UPDATE (03/08/2013) Selected candidates have been notified and all the positions have been filled.

Project Summary

The Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering department (EECE) at Washington University in St. Louis (WU) has instituted a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program on "Energy Research with Global Reach". This program will provide an opportunity for ten outstanding undergraduates to spend ten weeks (including international visit) at WU during the summer, where they will conduct independent research under the guidance of one or more faculty members. They will spend two and half weeks of their stay in one of the McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environment Partnership partnering institutions (MAGEEP, one of the 25 global institutes visited every year by the MAGEEP international program).

List of Projects

• Next generation light harvesting devices for solar cell fabrication, micro/nano photonics research for next generation solar cells
• Metabolic engineering of thermophilic bacteria to produce biofuel
• Capacity fade analysis and optimal control of lithium-ion batteries
• Flame synthesis of cathode materials for lithium ion batteries
• Sustainable geological CO2 sequestration
• Coupling of heat regeneration and chemical looping concepts, optimization of metal-oxide particle characteristics for chemical looping combustion
• Carbon-dioxide capture from oxy-coal combustion systems
• Submicrometer particle formation and capture of Hg in oxy-coal combustion exhausts
• Biomass-derived renewable or sustainable synthetic polymer design, synthesis and characterization
• Carbon sequestration and fate of metals during coal combustion
• Engineering genetic circuits to integrate multiple environmental signals to control biological processes