[E&E seminars] MITEI Seminar Series: Arun Majumdar - April 14

[Jameson Twomey]

We are pleased to announce the seventh speaker of the 2008-2009 MITEI  
Seminar Series. We hope you will join us Tuesday, April 14th as we  
welcome Arun Majumdar, the Almy and Agnes Maynard Professor of  
Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Engineering at UC  
Berkeley and the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and  
Environment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Using Science to Innovate in Efficient Energy Utilization

Date: April 14th
Time: 4:15 - 5:45 - Light refreshments to follow
Location: 66-110 (Landau Building, 25 Ames Street)

Abstract

To address the challenges of energy security and climate change, it is  
becoming increasingly clear that “business as usual” traditional  
approaches to decarbonize the energy supply and to reduce energy  
demand are inadequate.  We need to create an era of major innovations  
in energy conversion, storage and end-use technology that are not only  
efficient, but are also scalable and cost-effective.  This, in  
combination with well-aligned policy, education and economics, can  
lead to profound societal changes.  Such major innovations are likely  
to happen through the fundamental understanding and utilization of  
science.  In this talk, I will discuss a few examples from my  
laboratory where we have used science to address basic needs in  
thermal energy conversion, transport, and utilization. Why is thermal  
energy important?  About 90 percent of the US energy supply is used in  
heating and cooling, and about 60 percent of the energy in any power  
generation process is wasted as heat! Hence, if we are to address the  
needs of the supply and demands sides of energy, we must develop the  
ability to manipulate thermal energy.  This talk will focus on  
fundamental barriers and limits in thermal energy processes that can  
only be overcome using science.  These include the alloy and amorphous  
limits of thermal conductivity in solids, which have significant  
bearing on thermoelectric energy conversion; critical heat flux in  
phase transitions, which are widely used in power generation and  
refrigeration; and new approaches to solar-thermal energy that are  
fundamentally different from those developed in the past.

About the Speaker

Professor Arun Majumdar received a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering  
from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) in 1985, and a  
PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California,  
Berkeley in 1989, for research conducted in the laboratory of  
Professor Chang-Lin Tien.  After being on the faculty of Arizona State  
University (1989-92) and University of California, Santa Barbara  
(1992-96), he began his faculty appointment in the Department of  
Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He  
currently holds the Almy and Agnes Maynard Chair Professorship in the  
College of Engineering.  In addition to his faculty appointment, he is  
the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environment at the  
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he is involved in  
creating new initiatives in the area of energy research.
Professor Majumdar served as the Chair of the Berkeley Nanosciences  
and Nanoengineering Institute and was also a member of the  
Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group to the President's Council of  
Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). He served as the Council  
of Materials Science and Engineering at the Department of Energy and  
is a member of the Advisory Committee of the National Science  
Foundation’s Engineering Directorate. Professor Majumdar is a  
recipient of the Institute Silver Medal (IIT-B) (1985), NSF Young  
Investigator Award (1992-97), ASME Melville Medal (1992), the Best  
Paper award of the ASME Heat Transfer Division of ASME (1993), Gustus  
Larson Memorial Award of the ASME (2001), Distinguished Alumni Award  
from IIT-B (2002), and ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award (2006). He is  
a fellow of ASME and AAAS, and was elected to the US National Academy  
of Engineering in 2005.

MITEI thanks CERA for its ongoing sponsorship of the Seminar Series.


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