Pitt Swanson School of Engineering

Engineers use catalysts in a wide range of applications, from food processing to chemical manufacture. Hence, developing effective, environmentally friendly catalysts is a priority. A new study headed by the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering might lead to the development of new, long-lasting catalysts made of tungsten oxide and similar materials.

The acquisition of Pittsburgh-based ALung Technologies Inc. earlier this month by LivaNova didn't come out of nowhere. That's because employees of ALung and TandemLife, an O'Hara Township company LivaNova acquired in 2018, have known each other for years, coming out of the UPMC and University of Pittsburgh life sciences ecosystem.

Inhee Lee, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, is part of a team designing a tracking platform that could be fastened to monarch butterflies to convey data about their location during their three-month migration south.

“Generating hydrogen from natural gas can actually be quite efficient,” said Götz Veser, Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. “Over the next 10 or 20 years, making hydrogen in an efficient way from fossil resources might be the way to reduce (our) carbon footprint faster and lower than with renewable technologies.”

Brewster has kept himself busy during his time at Pitt, studying environmental science with minors in environmental engineering and studio arts and certificates in geographic information systems and sustainability.

Grant noted Schuster’s strong track record of developing and executing strategies to structure and achieve significant, sustainable growth, which will lead AIChE to its next phase. “Darlene personifies the values and integrity that are essential as the next leader of AIChE. I want to express my special thanks to the search committee for their commitment and hard work in this process,” added Grant.

Garrett Sisk, the club’s president and junior majoring in environmental engineering, said his first memories of birdwatching go back to elementary school. His grandmother gave him his very first bird feeder which sparked a passion that has followed him through college and beyond.

The partnership will see the MLB gaining an equity stake in the company that develops mobile-based hitting and throwing technology for baseball and softball players. Diamond Kinetics, will also become the new “Trusted Youth Development Platform of Major League Baseball.” The company was co-founded by William "Buddy" Clark, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science.

For University of Pittsburgh alumna and McKeesport native Allison Howard, the materials used on our skin and hair while asleep are just as important as the materials used in our waking hours. Howard launched Nollapelli, an online startup company dedicated to distributing bedding designed to protect skin and hair, in 2019. She says she began familiarizing herself with the bedding industry in 2017 after noticing the effects traditional bedding had on her skin and hair.

When doctors can't easily reach someone -- whether it's in a war zone or a natural disaster -- robot bugs are being designed to come to the rescue. Ravi Shankar discusses the medical applications for the tiny insect-inspired robots designed by his lab.

Melissa Bilec is an expert on reuse, and she doesn’t have to look far for an example of it done well: Just nearby is Hot Metal Bridge, a former steel-mill structure that she helped convert into a pedestrian and bicycle bridge.A three-time alumna of Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering (ENGR ’97, ’99G, ’07G), the William Kepler Whiteford professor and co-director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation has a history with the University’s sustainability efforts that goes back decades — she even worked with the center as a graduate student.

The report details three pillars for achieving 2037 goals: energy demand reduction; clean supply via renewable and clean energy investment; and low carbon connections via active, shared and low carbon mobility.

Insect-inspired robots that operate in hard-to-reach spaces and inhospitable environments have been developed at the University of Pittsburgh.

Scientists had designed tiny robot bugs that can fit in hard to reach places, journey inhospitable environments, and hopefully not be hacked like in Netflix’s Black Mirror. Researchers at Swanson School of Engineering in Pennsylvania have created the bugs capable of doing jobs humans can not.

For students in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, learning takes place far beyond Benedum Hall. Whether they gain experience doing fieldwork for a company located on the other side of the country or joining in on meetings with potential future employers in Pittsburgh, the co-op program gives engineers an immersive introduction to their future careers.

New and exciting work is underway in Pittsburgh. The Covestro Circular Economy Program is the first US graduate program on circular economy design solutions for global waste. The program is designed to create opportunities for the research, education, and innovative advancement of circular economy principles.

The MAC began as part of the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering to provide workforce training to members of the Pittsburgh community without the requirement of college admittance. Having expanded to Titusville as part of Pitt-Titusville’s Education and Training Hub, the MAC continues to provide advanced, hands-on training for those that qualify.

Nathan Youngblood and colleagues have developed a prototype window with switchable absorption properties, so that it can be set to harvest heat in the winter and reflect it in the summer. Crucially, in a paper in the journal ACS Photonics, they show it does so without becoming visibly darker to those in the house, as the material used is highly selective in the wavelengths of light it absorbs or reflects.

“Infrastructure will continue to deteriorate and we need to put in resources to ensure things like this don’t happen,” says University of Pittsburgh engineering professor Kent Harries, citing insufficient funding for bridge maintenance nationwide.

The University of Pittsburgh’s energy consumption is on track to meet the sustainability goal of a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2037.

“The unique twist on smart windows is that the visible light transmission is pretty much unchanged,” says Nathan Youngblood of the University of Pittsburgh, “so it is energy-saving, aesthetically pleasing, and also provides thermal benefits.”

Pitt trustee SaLisa Berrien (ENGR ’91) received a $100,000 Black Founders Fund award from Google for Startups. The award will be used to expand her Tampa-based renewable energy services company, COI Energy.

New Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey is tapping into the expertise of several Pitt professors as part of his transition. Gainey, the city’s first Black mayor, was inaugurated on Jan. 3.

Nathan Youngblood, an assistant professor in the engineering department at the University of Pittsburgh, works on reconfigurable or phase-change photonics, taking optical components like lenses or mirrors and making them switch between two states. When working with a startup called Bodle on color-changing technology displays, he and his coresearchers thought, If you can use a thin coating on something like a piece of glass to switch it between two different colors, can you also switch between two different states of reflection for infrared light?