Questions? Contact us at engindiversity@umass.edu.

2022 Students and Projects

View the final list of REU students, home institutions, UMass advisors and project topics below:

• Sebastien Alouidor - UMass; Advisor: Nicholas Caverly
  Essential for whom: Microgrids and critical infrastructures

• Gabriel Somers - RIT; Advisor: Juniper Katz
  Rural Equity in Solar Siting

• Lavina Ngo - Smith; Advisor: David Irwin
  Understanding Changes in Energy Usage Across Socioeconomic Groups

• Fernando Corano Garcia - RIT; Advisors: David Boutt/Sarah McKnight
  Lithium extraction and water resource impacts in the Western US and/or South America

• Alyce Whyte - Kentucky State U; Advisors: Christian Guzman/Cielo Sharkus
  Examining Equitable Impacts of Climate Extremes on Hydropower Infrastructure and EJ Communities

• Emma Soto - RPI; Advisor: Erin Baker
  Heat pumps, affordable energy storage, and grid integration

• Raul Vera - UMass; Advisor: Eve Vogel
  Fishing for food security in the dammed Connecticut River

• Caitlyn Carter - NCAT; Advisor: Krista Harper
  Community perspectives on energy justice issues in Holyoke

• Anushree Patil & Lydia D'Ambrosio - UMass; Advisors: Krista Harper/Steve Fernandez
  Solar-powered community fridge

Program and Eligibility Details

As an ETI REU you will:

• Receive a stipend of $600/week

• Have round-trip travel to UMass Amherst covered

• Be provided housing if needed

• Gain access to UMass facilities: our research spaces, library, rec center, and more

•  Grow personally and professionally through both the research experience and formal program activities that focus on areas such as intercultural knowledge, inclusive leadership and collaboration, scientific and technical communication, and more.

We encourage applications from students with no prior research experience. There is no minimum GPA requirement. Any student who is enrolled full-time or part-time in a 4-year college or university or community college in the U.S. may apply. This program is designed to be a welcoming and supportive environment for students from diverse backgrounds, especially those from traditionally marginalized communities.
 

Proposed Project Examples

• Can electricity be free?
  What is the right to energy? Is there a right to energy? Is it technically and economically feasible or desirable to develop a universal basic energy allocation? How do different modes of energy production and consumption alter the considerations of making energy access free? What are technical, economic, and ethical considerations in addressing this question?

• Essential for whom: Microgrids and critical infrastructures
  Microgrids can sustain critical infrastructures in the event of grid outages. The goal of this honors thesis would be to analyze variability in what counts as 'critical' and the implications of that variability for social justice. One way of doing this would be for the student to analyze the microgrid projects for essential services receiving startup financial support from the Mass Clean Energy Center.

• Energy Equity Game
  This project will involve developing and evaluating an energy equity game appropriate for classrooms and outreach events. The game will illustrate how initial inequities can lead to ongoing inequity, even when the initial conditions are corrected. It will be in the context of electricity markets. Once developed, the game will be tested in classroom environments. The student should have an interest in learning about the electricity system, an interest in equity, an interest in behavioral/educational experiments, and enough quantitative skills to develop a quantitative game and perform simple statistical analysis.

• Rural Equity in Solar Siting
  To meet the Commonwealth's clean energy targets, utility-scale solar developments must be part of the mix of renewable energy solutions. Utility-scale solar developers are targeting rural parts of the state for solar siting but local residents are often opposed to such developments because there are negative impacts and local residents do not directly benefit from the developments. Furthermore, local governments frequently do not have the capacity to oversee such projects or develop guidance on siting. How can the Commonwealth or local governments deal with these challenges? Does the urgency of climate change trump local impacts of solar developments, etc.?

• Investigate investment options that mitigate hydrological extremes in the Holyoke power system
  This is part of a larger project. This module considers the risk climate change poses to HG&E's ability to supply electricity and what investment options it can choose to prepare in advance. The investment planning is an optimization model that minimizes the cost of investing on new infrastructure (like distributed generation and storage) while penalizing for unserved loads. Scenarios will be assigned different probabilities according to climate historical data and climate change scenarios. To assess equity, we consider modifying the objective function and adding new constraints. Such modifications will limit or penalize for having EJ communities disproportionately underserved.

• Investigate investment options that mitigate hydrological extremes in the Holyoke power system
  This is part of a larger project. This module considers the risk climate change poses to HG&E's ability to supply electricity and what investment options it can choose to prepare in advance. The investment planning is an optimization model that minimizes the cost of investing on new infrastructure (like distributed generation and storage) while penalizing for unserved loads. Scenarios will be assigned different probabilities according to climate historical data and climate change scenarios. To assess equity, we consider modifying the objective function and adding new constraints. Such modifications will limit or penalize for having EJ communities disproportionately underserved.

• Brutalist Buildings and Community Health
  Brutalist concrete buildings are difficult to maintain and repair, but they represent tremendous embodied energy (both physical and social). What are the environmental benefits of modernizing a large Brutalist building (for example the Fine Arts Center, Tobin or the Springfield Courthouse) instead of demolishing and replacing it?

• Understanding Changes in Energy Usage Across Socioeconomic Groups
  The project would quantify how natural gas (or electricity) usage and behavior in a New England town changes year-to-year among different size houses and/or socioeconomic groups irrespective of weather due to changes in natural gas prices or the onset of COVID-19. The project will require normalization of gas (or electricity) usage relative to weather to do an apples-to-apples comparison. The project will require significant data analysis, e.g., normalizing and correlating a few different datasets, such as gas/electricity data, weather data, price data, etc.

• Life-Cycle and Supply Chain Analysis of Perovskite Solar Cells
  Perovskite solar cells are exciting next generation photovoltaics with efficiencies surpassing Silicon cells. The topic would be look at the supply chain of the materials used for the fabrication of these system and also perform a life-cycle analysis of the devices.

• Transitioning from Renewables to Fossil Fuels in Nineteenth Cenury New England
  The thesis would explore the social, environmental, and economic justice dimensions of some aspect of the transition to fossil fuels in 19th century New England. This could involve examining the energy transition in a particular town (such as when local residents replaced candles and whale-oil lamps with manufactured gas--from coal--which in turn was replaced by "natural" gas by the mid-20th century), or examining a particular industry (such as textile mills, which one-by-one replaced their turbines powered by flowing water with ones powered by coal-fired steam, which in turn was replaced by electricity mostly generated by coal-fired power plants. One nearby industrial site to explore this transition and its impact is the Springfield Armory, because its history and surrounding community are so well documented.

• How could the Energy Information Administration (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook better address equity?
  The student will analyze the EIA Annual Energy Outlook https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/, examine what is and is not covered in terms of equity, and produce a companion report, narrative and exhibits that revisits the Annual Energy Outlook through an equity lens.

• Community perspectives on energy justice issues in Holyoke
  Student will work with ELEVATE's community-based participatory research (CBPR) team to study past and current efforts to make the energy system more equitable in Holyoke, identifying issues, conflicts, and frames used by community members and policymakers.

• Campus decarbonization and the future of work at UMass Amherst
  Student would conduct interviews and analyze planning documents to study how the process of campus decarbonization might affect UMass staff workers, especially those who work at the Physical Plant. What are those workers' hopes and fears about decarbonization efforts? The student would work with project lead to develop an expanded project to be carried out by students in Harper's Spring 2022 qualitative research methods class.

• Lithium extraction and water resource impacts in the Western US and/or South America
  Potential for multiple students. Thesis students will work with an existing collaborative research team to establish calculations of available water remaining and compile detailed assessment of possible hydrological impacts in terms of water quanitity or quality in these regions. *Note: Spanish speakers/minors would be helpful for South America work

• Fishing for food security in the dammed Connecticut River
  Synthesize known information on fishing sites and species harvested in the MA portion of the CT River, link to ecological productivity changes from dams and hydropower operations, and trace as much as possible to particular human communities eating the fish. Suggest how operations might be modified to provide for improved fish catch of species that provide nutrition for low-income state residents while still providing flexible low-carbon electricity for the grid. Will involve documentary research, expert interviews, and possibly field site visits, perhaps interviews.

• Maximizing our current clean energy infrastructure: Case study of Puerto Rico hydroelectric power systems
  Puerto Rico's water reservoirs are a key infrastructure in the energy-water-food nexus of the island. They store water for hydroelectricity generation, crop irrigation, and drinking water supply. Yet, they are not being used at their full electricity generation capacity, partly due to hurricane-driven accelerated sedimentation rates on the reservoirs. This project aims to estimate the impact of this accelerated sedimentation on the composition of energy generation in Puerto Rico.

• Examining Equitable Impacts of Climate Extremes on Hydropower Infrastructure and EJ Communities
  In this work we propose a holistic analysis of water-energy climate disaster with an equity lens. The study is composed of three modules: I) modeling of dam failure during hydrologic and climate extremes II) power system investment planning, and III) power flow analysis. A main focus will be to we use HEC-RAS to analyze the impact of dam failure-collapse on hydropower infrastructure on the Holyoke dam in Western Massachusetts and to quantify the share of benefits and burdens by different demographic groups at the census tract level. The project aims to perform one-dimensional and two-dimensional hydraulic calculations for the full network of canals, ditches, floodplains, and hydraulic head, demonstrating the steady-state continuous flow and static hydraulic boundary conditions.

• Visualizing Holyoke’s Gas Distribution and Usage Data to Support Equitable Decarbonization of Residential Heating Systems

About ETI

The Energy Transition Institute (ETI) leads stakeholder-engaged research and education at the intersection of energy technology and social equity. Our network of researchers spans 50+ departments and programs across UMass Amherst, including Engineering, Humanities and Fine Arts, Management, Natural Sciences, and Social and Behavioral Sciences. ETI research activities include the NSF-funded ELEVATE program, which offers fellowships to PhD students doing convergence research across disciplines on clean energy, equity and climate resilience.