education highlights
Education Programs and Goals
To make the K-12 education program more sustainable, CURENT is looking at creating a donation account
where individuals can donate money to K-12 education programs. Funds for all K-12 events currently are
supplied by NSF and DOE funds, but to make the programs last long term additional support will be needed.
Some of the programs provided by CURENT in the Min H. Kao Building are:
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Adventures in STEM Girls Camp – a one week day camp for middle school girls that are interested in
learning about electricity, mathematics, biology, and careers. More information about the camp can be
found at http://curent.utk.edu/camp
Young Scholars Program (YSP) – a four week research program for local high school students that
introduces them to the topics important to power engineering. Each student has a faculty or graduate
student mentor that mentors the student through a research project. The program includes field trips,
technical seminars, lab work, professional development and social events. More information about the
program can be found at http://curent.utk.edu/ysp
Research Experience for Teachers – a four week curriculum development program for local high school
teachers that explores electricity concepts and tools that can be used to enhance students’ science and
engineering learning experiences. More information about the program can be found at http://curent.
utk.edu/ret
K-12 Outreach – Classroom visits, lab demonstrations, field trips, materials supply, and family engineering
nights are some of our common activities that we work on. Each event is custom designed based upon
the needs of the school. For more information, contact Mr. Erin Wills ([email protected]).
congratulations
Graduate student Can Huang received the 2015 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed
Students Abroad. The award was established to encourage research excellence and to recognize the
achievement among Chinese students abroad. It is granted across all fields of study and was presented to
only 500 out of 460,000 Chinese oversea students all over the world. The final winners were selected by a
review committee organized by China’s Ministry of Education. Out of the winning students, Can is the only
student majoring in Power Systems Engineering.
Dr. Daniel Constinett’s research team from the UTK College of Engineering and CURENT were selected as
one of 18 finalists for the Google Little Box Challenge. Sponsored by Google and the IEEE Power Electronics
Society, the global challenge seeks to improve upon the current design and size of inverters, which play a
key role in everything from solar power to electric vehicles. Dr. Costinett and his team—which included Drs.
Leon Tolbert, Fred Wang, and Zheyu Zhang and graduate students Chongwen Zhao, Brad Trento, Ling Jiang,
and Bo Liu, and collaborators from CURENT member company EPRI— worked to develop the smallest, most
efficient two-kilowatt inverter possible. The resulting device was about the size of a deck of index cards, a
20-fold reduction compared to the current commercial state-of-the-art. Our research team was selected as a
finalist from among hundreds of applicants worldwide. The team is honored to be among the finalists.
Dr. Chien-fei Chen received an award in September 2015 from the NSF CRISP (Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes) Program. The interdisciplinary proposal is entitled, “Revolution
through Evolution: A Controls Approach to Improve How Society Interacts with Electricity,” with the efforts
of the lead principal investigator, Dr. Andrea Mammoli from the University of New Mexico and other collaborators from Michigan Technological University and Texas Tech University.
Recent internships for CURENT students:
Taylor Woodward - Duke Energy
Summer Church - Eaton Corporaton
Siqi Wang - NEC Lab
Yidan Lu and Haoyu Yuan - Peak Reliability
internships
Micah Till - Dominion Virginia Power
Yonggli Zhu, Wenyun Ju and May Mahmoudi - GE
Dallas Hamlin - ORNL
Taylor Short - Southern Company
“I strongly encourage my students to obtain internships so they can learn the exciting new technologies in
the electric power industry and apply the skills they obtain at school to solve real-world problems. When
they then return to school, the intern experience helps them be better prepared to understand new theories
and methods.”
- Dr. Fran Li
newsletter Spring 2016
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