On February 3 more than 1,300 members of the South Bend community made it to the third floor of the St. Joseph County Public Library to enjoy energy-related hands-on activities presented by ND Energy affiliated laboratories. Science Alive! is an annual event sponsored by the library that draws families and people of all ages to learn more about a wide variety of science topics.
ND Energy contributed 10 stations to the event, filling a room and spilling out into the hallway. Over 40 graduate students, professors, Student Energy Board undergraduates, and staff participated during the six-hour event. Research topics included radiation, membranes, nanoparticles, polymers, low temperature plasma, hydrogen gas generation, superconductivity, and concentrated solar power. Research groups that participated were from the laboratories of Kyle Doudrick, David Go, Amy Hixon, Abigail Mechtenberg, Svetlana Neretina, Jennifer Schaefer, William Schneider, and Jonathan Whitmer.
New this year was a table demonstrating the work being done by Notre Dame’s CISTAR group, under the direction of William Schneider. The Center for Innovative and Strategic Transformation of Alkane Resources (CISTAR), is a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center that brings together researchers from Purdue University, the University of New Mexico, Northwestern University, University of Notre Dame, and the University of Texas at Austin. The primary goal of the center is to create a transformative engineered system to convert light hydrocarbons from shale resources to chemicals and transportation fuels in smaller, modular, local, and highly networked processing plants. CISTAR is headquartered in the Flex Lab Facility at Purdue’s Discovery Park (https://cistar.us/).
ND Energy is a University Research Center whose mission is to build a better world by creating new energy technologies and systems and educating individuals to help solve the most critical energy challenges facing our world today. For more information, visit the ND Energy website at energy.nd.edu or contact Barbara Villarosa, Business and Communications Program Director, at bvillaro@nd.edu or 574-631-4776.