PIONEERING MARINE RENEWABLE ENERGY RESEARCH
JACK HUNTER
More than 50 % of U . S . population lives within 50 miles of the Nation ’ s coasts , and cost-effective marine renewable energy technologies can not only supply renewable electricity to consumers but also empower the blue economy in coastal area . Dr . Lei Zuo , Robert E . Hord Jr . Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the NSF I / UCRC Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems ( CEHMS ), is a pioneer of marine renewable energy and has more than a decade experience with $ 7 M funding from the DOE , NSF , USAID , EPA , CIT , NYSERDA and the industry . He was recently awarded a Department of Energy ( DOE ) grant in the amount of $ 1.8M together with collaborators at Stevens Institute of Technology and Resolute Marine Energy , Inc , for 100KW floating oscillating surge wave energy converter ( OSWEC ) design . This is a second project after a previous $ 2M grant from DOE Water Power Technologies Office ( WPTO ) after WPTO was established in 2016 , in which Dr . Zuo and his colleagues designed and developed 1-10KW highly-efficient power takeoff ( PTO ) systems and tested in wave tank and on the NREL dynamometer . In the past year , he was also awarded two NSF projects to develop ocean wave powered resilient food-energy-water ( FEW ) nexus systems and bio-inspired self-powered fish telemetry , one DOE STTR project to develop sustainable marine aquaculture system , one project from the National Offshore Wind R & D Consortium to develop a technology to stabilizing the offshore wind platform by ocean wave energy harvesting , one project from the Sandia National Lab to develop active-controllable mechanical motion rectifier , and one project from the European Union ’ s MaRINET2 program to test wave-current hybrid energy converters in France . Recently he was also jointly appointed as a Chief Research Scientist at Pacific Northwestern National Lab .
In the past year , he guided student teams who won several national competitions , including American Made Challenges Waves to Water Prize , Ocean Observing Prize , Marine Energy Collegiate Competition launched by the DOE , and P3 National Students Design Competition launched by the EPA . He was the Invited Panel Moderator for Marine Energy Forum at the 2019 Global Sustainable Technology and Innovation Conference ( 2019 in Brussel , Belgium ), an Invited Keynote Speaker at the 4th Asian Wave and Tidal Energy Conference ( 2018 in Taipei , Taiwan ).
Lei Zuo
Robert E . Hord , Jr . Professor & John R . Jones III Faculty Fellow
VIRGINIA TECH MECHANICAL ENGINEERING ANNUAL REPORT • 2019-2020 • RESEARCH 39