Experimental green technologies took center stage at the 13th annual Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Innovation Summit, held in March in Washington D.C.
UWM was represented by Chanyeop Park, assistant professor of electrical engineering in the College of Engineering & Applied Science who—alongside collaborators from Georgia Tech and the Center for Advanced Power Systems (CAPS) at Florida State University—met with U.S. secretary of energy Jennifer Granholm and showcased their ARPA-E-funded research.
ARPA-E is the U.S. Department of Energy’s incubator. Through funded research, they help move promising research out of university labs and into the marketplace. ARPA-E’s annual innovation summit brings together more than 2,000 of the nation’s leading scientists, engineers, and investors and showcases cutting-edge energy technologies, facilitates relationships to move those technologies to market, and hosts an open dialogue to find solutions to current and future energy challenges.
Park recently brought to UWM $1 million in research funding for his role in an ARPA-E-funded, collaborative project that aims to develop a clean alternative to the world’s most potent greenhouse gas—SF6, or sulfur hexafluouride. He is working with Georgia Tech researchers, who lead the nearly $4 million project to develop and test a prototype of a three-phase SF6-free AC high-voltage circuit breaker.