Director’s Corner

by Brian Anderson, Ph.D.

Seeking diverse viewpoints and perspectives has always been foundational for how NETL develops solutions to our nation’s toughest energy challenges. Acknowledging and valuing the strength of diversity is central to the Lab’s Historically Black College and Universities and Other Minority Institutions (HBCU-OMI) program, which provides student training and research opportunities for traditionally underrepresented communities in the fields of science and technology related to fossil energy resources and carbon management technologies.

Throughout May, we’re featuring some of the cutting-edge NETL-sponsored projects supporting our HBCU-OMI program. For example:

•    Teams from the University of Texas at San Antonio and Florida International University are conducting multiphase flow modeling work that has the potential to bolster NETL’s world-renowned Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges (MFiX) software suite through the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques.
•    Students and professors at the University of California, Riverside and the University of Texas at El Paso are undertaking efforts to harness the emerging field of quantum information science to better monitor operating conditions in advanced power plants and safeguard the nation’s energy infrastructure against cyberattacks.
•    Researchers from New Mexico State University and Arizona State University are taking cues from wildlife to create a new generation of autonomous robots to monitor and inspect vital energy and civil infrastructure.
•    Students at Morgan State University are developing robust high-temperature sensors that will unlock higher power plant efficiencies as part of the university’s first-ever collaboration with NETL.

Each of these collaborations is approaching a complex problem in new and unique ways thanks to the efforts of students from a variety of backgrounds.

Visit our website to learn more about our University Training and Research program and other NETL work to ensure affordable, abundant and reliable energy that drives a robust economy and national security, while developing technologies to manage carbon across the full life cycle and enabling environmental sustainability for all Americans.