Outreach and News

  • Weiqiang Chen successfully defended his PhD dissertation, congratulations!
  • Arshiah Mirza successfully defended her MS thesis, congratulations!
  • Prof. Bazzi has received academic tenure and promotion to Associate Professor at UConn!
  • APEDL received an ONR DURIP Award!
  • Prof. Bazzi received the NSF CAREER Award!
  • Yiqi Liu accepted a full-time position at John Deere!
  • Ethan Hotchkiss has decided to continue at APEDL for an MS degree.
  • Prof. Bazzi has been elevated to the grade of IEEE Senior Member, congratulations!
  • Arshiah Mirza published her first paper at the IEEE ITEC India conference.
  • Yiqi Liu is currently an intern at Tesla Motors in CA.
  • Yiqi Liu successfully defended his PhD in August 2017, songratulations!
  • Amy Robinson and Bailey Andrew were awarded the UConn IDEA grant to work on micro wind turbines, congratulations!
  • APEDL hosted two Connecticut High School teachers this summer (2017) for training on solar PV systems, as part of the NSF-funded Joule Fellows program at UConn.
  • APEDL hosted two international interns, Elie Libbos from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and Joyhun Min from South Korea. Both internship projects were successful.
  • Yiqi Liu received approval for his PhD proposal.
  • Weiqiang Chen received the GE Graduate Fellowship at UConn for 2017!
  • APEDL hosted two Connecticut High School teachers this summer (2016) for training on solar PV systems, as part of the NSF-funded Joule Fellows program at UConn.
  • Both Yiqi Liu and Prof. Bazzi were nominated for the Mentorship Excellence Award to the UConn office of Undergraduate Research.
  • Prof. Bazzi was elected UTC Assistant Professor of Engineering Innovation for a duration of three years starting July 2016.
  • Weiqiang Chen was awarded the best TA award in the ECE Department for Fall of 2015!
  • The lab hosted two high school students, one from South Korea and the other from CT, as part of the during the summer of 2015 with focus on vehicular motor drives.
  • APEDL received two new federal grants (in collaboration with other colleagues) for research in the areas of advanced control of switched reluctance machines, and high power density electric machines.
  • Prof. Bazzi received a Research Excellence Program Award (REP) from UCONN’s Office of Vice President for Research.
  • Two students from Glastonbury High School have completed their advanced research projects at APEDL, with one focusin on thermoelectric energy conversion and the other on solar PV panel characterization.
  • The lab will be participating with the Mentor Connection outreach program this summer (July-August 2015), with four-five high school students who will be introduced to motor control!
  • Senior Design team working on Energy Efficiency Planning with United Illuminating won second place in the senior design competition among all ECE senior design projects.
  • Prof. Bazzi received the Outstanding Teaching Achievement award from the UCONN ECE department in 2014!
  • Three Senior Design Teams with three senior students in each team are working on solar energy for the UCONN Spring Valley Farm (with a Service Learning Component), a project with Lenze, and a project with United Illuminating.
  • Two high school students from Glastonbury High School are participating in the Advanced Research Mentorship program at the school by being part of APEDL for two semesters.
  • Four high school students from CT, NY, and CA completed the Mentor Connection program at APEDL on electric drives fro electric vehicles. Thanks for Yiqi and Xiaofang for mentoring the students.
  • Two teachers from Glastonbury High School, Tammy and George, completed a the NSF-sponsored Joule Fellowship program at APEDL with focus on solar PV energy conversion. Thanks for Weiqiang and Antony for being Joule Buddies!
  • On May 3rd, 2014, APEDL was represented at the 31st annual Connecticut Invention Convention (CIC) through a judge (Prof. Bazzi) and the ECE outreach booth (Weiqiang Chen). CIC always has very interesting and innovative inventions by K-8 students.
  • On May 2nd, 2014, Two senior design teams at APEDL successfully completed their projects (modular linear induction machine and hybrid PV-thermoelectric energy system). The linear induction machine team (Jonathan Rarey, Julio Yela, and David Hackney) received first place among all ECE senior design teams!
  • APEDL is getting ready for summer 2014: NSF RET for teachers, and Mentor Connection high school students!
  • On April 12th, 2014, Engineering Open House hosted a large number of talented incoming freshmen and their families and friends. APEDL presented two experimental demos on grid synchronization of synchronous generators and servo motor control. Thanks to Weiqiang and Mike for their efforts.
  • On April 7th, 2014, more than 10 Engr 1000 students attended demos setup by APEDL. Thanks to Yiqi, Amruta, and Xiaofang for their efforts.
  • Paul Han, a senior high school student at Glastonbury High School has been supervised by Prof. Bazzi for over five months to perform research on the effect of various material used in induction motors on their efficiency. Paul has had very interesting results as part of the Advanced Research Mentorship Program.
  • A team of three undergraduate students at APEDL, Luocheng Wang, Jonathan Weiss, and Anotny Xenophontos participated in Glastonbury High School’s fisrt STEMposium on 3/24/2014, and discussed energy awarenss with parents and students. Their topic focused on renewable energy, especially solar and thermo-electric energy.
  • APEDL received over 250 pieces of various magnetic components from Coilcraft during Marh and April 2014. Also, thanks for the cool sunglasses, Coilcraft!

  • The newly established electric machines and drives educational lab has generous donations from Yaskawa, Texas Instruments , and TDK-Lambda . Thank you all!
  • The newly established electric machines and drives educational lab is highlighted in this news article: article available here
  • Prof. Bazzi and Weiqiang Chen are in the process of establishing a new educational electric machines and drives lab in the Information Technology Building with a grant from the School of Engineering Deanery. This is currently up an running for the new “Electric Machines and Drives” course, and a New Lab Manual will be released soon.
  • APEDL participated in the UConn Mentor Connection (more info available here ) hosting Luciana Mueller from Mansfield, CT and Evan Zhao from Palo Alto, CA. Both had outstanding performane with the help of Yiqi Liu and Jonathan Rarey. The project was on a scaled-down motor drive and its relationship to electric vehicles. The final prototype is shown below.

  • APEDL will be participating in the UConn Mentor Connection (more info available here ) and will host two high-school students who will be introduced to basics of power electronics and motor control.
  • Julio Yela received several scholarships during Spring 2013, (more info available here ).
  • APEDL received 40 micro-inverters from SolarBridge Technologies for research and demonstration purposes. Thanks SolarBridge!
  • Prof. Bazzi was selected as a Service-Learning Fellow (more info available here ) where students in his Spring 2014 courses will have the option to learn and perform community service related to energy awareness with focus on solar energy.
  • APEDL was represented in the 2013 Connecticut Invention Convention during judging activities (see below) on May 4th, 2013. There were numerous talented K-8 students with very impressive inventions.
  • APEDL was mentioned in UConn’s President Herbst speech on “State of the University” on April 4th, 2013! (more infor available here ).
  • Prof. Bazzi established more than 50% new power electronics experiments for the educational power electronics lab where students get more hands-on experience and build their own power electronic circuits. Hardware experiments having been extended beyod the existing DC/DC board to AC/DC rectifiers and controlled rectifiers, and DC/AC inverters! The lab is currently complete with 11 experiments, and a New Lab Manual to be released soon.
  • Interview with Prof. Bazzi after joining UConn (interview published on Jan. 14th, 2013) is available here ).

 

School of Engineering Outreach

The School of Engineering is very active in K-12, undergradaute, and graduate outreach. Further details are available here.

Center for Clean Energy Engineering Outreach

The Center is also active in several outreach activities. Further details are available here.