Dr. Carlos Romero-Talamas, a professor in the UMBC Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been recognized with a DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) for his research in computational models of nuclear fusion technology.

The YFA program exists "to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions." Of receiving this award, Dr. Romero-Talamas said "This allows us to explore a type of self-organized magnetized plasma, the spheromak, for operating modes that would lead to a thermonuclear fusion reactor design with significant reductions in size, cost, and engineering complexity over the leading concept, the tokamak."

Nuclear fission power plants are in common use around the world and operate by splitting apart relatively heavy atoms, producing lighter elements. Fusion works in the opposite way, by deriving energy from fusing atoms together to form heavier elements. All stars, including our Sun, produce energy from fusion. Stars are able to do this because massive amounts of gravity compress a star's matter. Creating the conditions for fusion within a human-engineered device on Earth could allow humanity to transcend our dependence on fossil fuels. Fusion energy research has led to several types of devices being proposed, such as tokomaks, spheromaks, and stellerators. Dr. Romero-Talamas is working to advance computational models which predict the flow of matter within spheromaks. Compared to other fusion energy schemes, the spheromak offers a simpler vessel shape, such as a cylinder, and the plasma is contained by internally created magnetic fields, avoiding the need for expensive external coils linking the plasma.

Dr. Julia Ross, now in her first semester as Dean of the UMBC College of Engineering and Information Technology, has been awarded a three million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation entitled "Engineering Teacher Pedagogy: Using INSPIRES to Support Integration of Engineering Design in Science and Technology Classrooms." Receiving this award along with Dr. Ross are her co-principal investigators, Dr. Jon Singer and Dr. Chris Rakes, both professors in the UMBC Department of Education.

The funded project will be conducted in partnership with Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS). High school classes in biology and technology education will incorporate elements of engineering into the sciences by adding open-ended design activities in which the teachers will act as facilitators or coaches  The UMBC and BCPS researchers will implement this new teaching program and will assess its effectiveness relative to the level of preparation of the teachers. This will enable teachers of future versions of these classes to be better prepared, and for the students in these future classes to be better served.

On receiving this award, Dr. Ross said "The project is a true partnership. We're bringing together engineering expertise, science and mathematics pedagogical expertise, and community partners in the Baltimore County Public School System to do something very innovative in K-12 education.It's a rigorous research project that none of us could do alone."

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