The attached paper published in the Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology has been selected for the JMST Best Paper Award 2019.

Title: Piezoelectric energy harvester utilizing mandibular deformation to power implantable biosystems: A feasibility study

Authors: Richard Fan, Soobum Lee, Hyunjun Jung, Mary Anne Melo and Radi Masri

Vol. 33 No. 8

The award will be given during a virtual ceremony on December 17, 2020 at Kangwon Land Convention Center, Korea, during the 2020 Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers Annual Conference.

Congratulations to the authors!

by CATALINA SOFIA DANSBERGER DUQUE

Ten recent UMBC alumni are recipients of 2020 – 2021 Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards, including seven from UMBC’s Class of 2020. Each year over 11,000 students apply and just over 2,000 are selected from hundreds of colleges and universities across the United States. The award secures funding for U.S. students to pursue international graduate study, research, internships, or teaching.

While COVID-19 has presented a range of challenges and uncertainties for Fulbright recipients, UMBC is proud to celebrate their hard work and achievements. 

“This year’s recipients have demonstrated great flexibility and maturity as they navigate the changes that our current global situation requires,” explains Brian Souders, M.A.‘19, TESOL and Ph.D. ’09, language, literacy and culture. He serves as associate director of global engagement opportunities in UMBC’s office of International Education Services. 

Souders, who is also UMBC’s Fulbright program advisor and scholar liaison, says that these hurdles have also not deterred UMBC faculty, students, and alumni from applying for the 2021 – 2022 Fulbright award.

Souders with Fulbright class of 2019 – 2021.

UMBC’s 2020 – 2021 Fulbright U.S. Student Program award recipients

Middle East

• Kiplyn Jones, M.P.P. ’20, public policy, Jordan, English Teaching 

East Asia

Osia on campus.
Photo courtesy of Osia.

• Hannah Jang ’20, global studies, Korea, English Teaching Assistant
• Phillip McKnight, M.A. ’19, instructional systems design, Laos, English Teaching Assistant
• Samina Musa ’20, chemical engineering, Malaysia, English Teaching Assistant
• Uchenna Osia ’19, computer science, Malaysia, English Teaching Assistant

Europe and Eurasia

• Brandon Ables, M.F.A., ’20, intermedia and digital arts, Romania, English Teaching Assistant
• Alida Hartwell ’20, bioinformatics/computational biology, Latvia, English Teaching Assistant
• Matthew Linz ’20, modern languages, linguistics, and intercultural communication, Kazakhstan, English Teaching Assistant
• Jocelyn Wilkins ’20, mechanical engineering, University of Porto, Portugal, Master’s Program

Kashett in Costa Rica, where he previously studied abroad. Photo courtesy of Kashett.

Western Hemisphere

• Daniel Kashkett ’19, global studies, Mexico, Bilateral Internship Program

Top Fulbright producer

The Fulbright U.S. Student program is highly competitive, and recipients are chosen based on academic or professional achievement and demonstrated leadership potential. UMBC’s ten 2020 – 2021 recipients include students from a broad range of majors. And they’ve been selected for a diverse range of experiences, as English teaching assistants, interns, and graduate students in Europe, East Asia, Western Hemisphere, and the Middle East. 

This success comes after UMBC was named a Fulbright Top Producing Institution for receiving fourteen Fulbright U.S. Student awards in 2019 – 2020. Only a small portion of institutions participating in the Fulbright program are designated as top producers each year, an honor granted by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. 

Both the Fulbright U.S. Student Program and the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program are designed to help build networks to support cross-cultural understanding. They connect people from the United States with people from around the world to dispel stereotypes and help each other reach common goals.

Faculty Fulbright for research in Southeast Asia

Beyond the student program, faculty are eligible to apply for the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program to further research on critical world problems in all disciplines. This year, UMBC’s John Rennie Short, professor of public policy, has received a Fulbright award to conduct research in Southeast Asia on the geopolitics of the South China Sea.

Rennie Short with local university students and staff in Nanchang, China.
Photo courtesy of Rennie Short.

The award will support Rennie Short’s research in Malaysia and the Philippines and allow him to visit Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. He will interview scholars and foreign policy analysts while at the Asian Center at the University of the Philippines Diliman and the Centre for ASEAN Regionalism at the University of Malaya, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Rennie Short also plans to give public lectures and seminars about U.S. public policy and other topics while in Southeast Asia.

Kuala Lampur, one of the places Rennie Short will visit for research.
Photo courtesy of Rennie Short.

This research will inform Rennie Short’s second book on East Asian maritime issues. “The book will widen our understanding of the complex and troubled geopolitics of the South China Sea,” he explains. “It will provide an Association of Southeast Asian Nations perspective to counter the dominant Chinese and U.S. narratives.” 

Rennie Short’s first book on East Asian geopolitical issues, Korea: A Cartographic History (2012, University of Chicago Press), tackled the East Sea versus Sea of Japan naming dispute between South Korea and Japan. He has also written “Troubled Waters: Conflict in the South China Sea Explained,” republished in U.S. News & World Report.

Other recent UMBC faculty recipients of Fulbright U.S. Scholar awards include Charissa Cheah, professor of psychology; Guenet Abraham, associate professor visual arts; Chuck Eggleton, professor and chair of mechanical engineering; and Marc Zupan, associate professor of mechanical engineering.

Abraham in Ethiopia as a Fulbright Scholar in 2018. Photo courtesy of Abraham.

Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 unless otherwise noted.

UMBC’s Carlos Romero-Talamas is leading a group of researchers in designing and building a machine to produce nuclear fusion energy. The project is one of just 16 new initiatives selected for support through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program. The researchers will use the $4 million grant to develop and build a centrifugal mirror that can conduct electricity and will generate energy from fusion reactions.

The team’s goal is to use what is essentially a rotating magnetic mirror machine to produce energy from nuclear fusion, explains Romero-Talamas, associate professor of mechanical engineering. “This type of nuclear energy is considered the ‘holy grail’ of energy sources because of its inexpensive and abundant fuel supply,” he says. He adds that fusion energy does not emit greenhouse gases. 

Design and fabrication

The research team includes researchers from both UMBC and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). The device they will design and build will fill a large laboratory at UMD’s Energy Research Facility.

Romero-Talamas explains that the power system will consist of hundreds of large, high-voltage capacitors and electromagnets. It will also include active controls to prevent the magnets from overheating. There will also be a separate space for machine controls, because researchers will not be in the equipment room while conducting experimental runs, as a safety precaution.

The research team will design the vacuum chamber and coils, which will be fabricated by experienced suppliers. The vacuum chamber will be approximately the length of two midsize cars. However, it will weigh a lot more than that, Romero-Talamas explains. The entire structure will be more than seven feet tall. 

Solving long-standing questions

Romero-Talamas will collaborate with Adil Hassam, Tim Koeth, Brian Beaoduin, and Ian Abel, all UMD faculty serving as co-PIs. He and the team will also work with undergraduate and graduate students from both universities. 

As the PI, Romero-Talamas will direct the research project, and will play a significant role in the engineering design and construction of the technology. UMD faculty and students will take the lead on equipment safety and certification. 

“Our efforts are aimed at not only solving long-standing physics questions regarding the possibility of confining thermonuclear plasmas with centrifugal mirrors, but to help in the technology transfer to market and make fusion energy a commercial reality,” Romero-Talamas says.

The researchers will measure the density of the particles, specifically how many particles the team is able to make rotate at a high speed inside the vacuum chamber. They will also measure the temperature and speed of the particles. 

Impact in fusion energy field 

Romero-Talamas says that he has been interested in fusion energy since he was a graduate student at Caltech. “Initially, I wanted to work in plasma rocket engines, but when I took a plasma physics class, fusion energy seemed very exciting, important, and urgent to me,” he recalls. “Since then, the study of plasma physics aimed toward helping fusion energy become a reality has been central to my research.” 

In nuclear fusion, energy is released when two nuclei collide at high speeds. Romero-Talamas points out that the act of fusing nuclei is difficult to accomplish. Like magnets, when ions are brought close to one another they begin to repel, which makes the high-speed collision important to overcome the repulsion and make fusion energy a success, he says.

Fusion energy can be generated from water and lithium, and doesn’t require many additional resources. It requires a small amount of material compared to traditional energy extraction methods, like burning fossil fuels, says Romero-Talamas. When a fusion reactor launches particles at each other at a high speed, their collisions can generate temperatures that are nearly 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.

Romero-Talamas and his research team will also work with experts at Virginia Tech and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on simulations needed for this work. And students will be involved in every step of the research, from design and construction to presenting findings at conferences and in peer-reviewed journal articles. 

This effort, which we call the Centrifugal Mirror Fusion Experiment, is an important step towards the realization of commercial fusion energy, Romero-Talamas explains. “A commercial reactor based on our concept would be relatively compact with respect to other fusion contenders, lowering the cost and time to market,” he says. “While there will be important materials and engineering questions that will need to be addressed before scaling up to a commercial reactor, we will address the most important physics questions that could put us in a path to a demo reactor in years, not decades. We are very excited to be working on a truly transformational technology that will enable a virtually inexhaustible energy source with very small impact to our planet.”