Description: Global, comprehensive evaluation of all renewable energy sources with focus on solar cells, hydrogen, and fuel cells.

Description: Exponential growth and demand for high performance batteries for portable electronic devices such as cellular phone, iPods, digital camera, camcorder and laptops have been a challenge to battery industry.

Description: Micro fuel cells for portable electronics have only entered a period of intensive research and development. These types of fuel cells have been characterized by different design, fuel, and cost requirements compared with fuel cells for stationary and automotive applications.

Description: Detailed operating principles and safety requirements of power conditioners. Students will become familiar with practical implications of power conditioners in alternative energy systems.

Description: Fuel Cell Systems Integration and Packaging is the process of assembling the fuel cell, power conditioning parts and the balance of plant in a logical, cost-effective way to support the subsequent testing, verification that the fuel cell system meets its requirements, and validation that the system performs in accordance with various requirements of portable, residential and automotive applications.

Description: Field testing, data collection, and evaluation of real-world photovoltaic and fuel cell systems available on campus and data analysis.

Description: Field applications and evaluations of the photovoltaic technology. Students will become familiar with real-world practical implications of photovoltaic technology.

Description: Theoretical and practical overview of various fuel cell systems, analyzing power demand for specific applications of stationary and automotive applications and the overall environmental and cost benefits.

Description: Reliability issues, accelerated life and safety testing, standards organizations, applicable standards for performance, reliability and safety testing, testing and certification agencies, regulatory organizations, incentives and industry organizations/newsletters.

University-wide course covering basic perspectives on sustainability. Using case studies, faculty and students from engineering, architecture, social sciences, and natural sciences exchange ideas on the major challenges involved in creating a sustainable future at local, national, and global levels.

Introduces students to research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, that may be employed in sustainability science. The course introduces methods from the social and natural sciences; demonstrates how the appropriate choice of method depends upon its relevance to the underlying research question and the data available to address the question; and emphasizes the unavoidable role of implicit and explicit assumptions in the choice of a research method.

Microeconomic principles of resource allocation applied to environmental goods and services; external environmental effects and environmental public goods; decision-making under uncertainty; adapting to and mitigating environmental changes.

Carbon cycle; nutrient cycles; carbon and nutrients in the oceans; climate change; oxygen and ozone; solid-waste pollution; urban-air pollution.

Concepts and definitions of the human dimensions of sustainability; the role of attitudes and values in shaping sustainability goals, practices, and programs; the diversity of values and socio-cultural contexts relating to sustainability; bottom-up and top-down sustainable policy development, social-data-collection methodologies.

Conceptual, ethical, and practical challenges in the design, manufacture, and lifecycle performance of products; environmental evaluation via materials-flow analysis and life-cycle assessment; global economic, environmental, cultural, and social aspects of competitive and functional product development and manufacture.

Political, economic, cultural, and moral foundations of science and technology policy and governance in democratic society.

Examines the evolving interface between sustainability and human enterprise. Explores and reviews key fundamental concepts in the sustainability arena. Delves into specific case studies of attempts by current businesses to become “greener” and “more sustainable.” Alternative enterprise models and examples of businesses that are using the current context to redefine the sustainability and enterprise interface will be also explored and discussed. Explores and applies an integrated approach to sustainability and enterprise.

Historical roots of the idea of development; economic theories of growth and their implications for sustainability; interrelationship among population growth, food security, poverty, inequality, urbanization, technological change, international trade, and environmental change at local, regional, and global scales.

Human and physical processes shaping urban ecologies and environments; human-environment interactions in the context of an urban region; effect of institutional and regulatory frameworks on the resilience and sustainability of social and urban-ecological systems; urban design, materials, transport, planning, and regulation.

How human activities and management practices alter biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and the provisioning of ecosystem services; use of economic and other social-science perspectives to estimate the value of ecosystem services; evaluation of options for achieving the sustainable flow of services from ecosystems.

Topical courses not offered in regular course rotation.e.g., new
courses not in the catalog, courses by visiting faculty, courses
on timely topics, highly specialized courses responding
to unique student demand.

Solar cells, or photovoltaics, have been growing at over 40% per year for the last decade, and today the solar industry uses more silicon than the IC industry. Advanced Solar Cells is a new course covering the operation and technology of solar cells. It will cover present commercial solar cell technologies, and also covers new solar cell concepts using nanostructures for ultra-high efficiency.

Due to ultimate energy supply constraints imposed by fossil fuel and ever increasing energy demand from consumers, renewable energy is attaining a much more prominent position as a promisingly viable and necessary solution. This course covers the critical technical constituents that advance electrical utilization of renewable energy. The lecture topics are divided into two modules: electricpower conversion and grid integration.