This grant provides funding to organize a workshop on energy efficiency on June 18-19, 2009 just prior to the CMMI Grantee Conference and at the same site. The objective of this workshop is to identify transformative research issues and opportunities to make alternative energy sources viable and to improve energy efficiency in transportation and electricity consumption through advanced materials and manufacturing, thereby leading to the conservation of fossil fuels and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. The workshop will focus on three aspects of energy efficiency: alternative energy sources, transportation systems, and electricity consumption. There will be three technical sessions presenting state-of-the-art issues, followed by break-out sessions. These break-out sessions will brainstorm ideas on transformative research issues and opportunities to make alternative energy sources viable and to improve the efficiency of electricity consumption.
The major output of this workshop will be a list of recommendations on future research directions in these areas. These recommendations will be disseminated not only in the form of a final report to the NSF, but will possibly be presented in professional society meetings and appear in publications. The latter approach provides wider dissemination of the information presented in this workshop and can more effectively engage the larger scientific and engineering audience in the proposed new research directions.
