November 2024
Center for Materials Research
Dr. Messaoud Bahoura, Professor of Engineering and Director of the Center for Materials Research (I) and his group published a peer-reviewed research article titled “Design and Fabrication of Tetradymites Based Vertically-oriented Single and Multilayer Thin Film Thermoelectric Generators (TFTEGs)”; in AIP Advances: Vol.14, Issue 11. Dr. Bahoura’s goup introduces introduces a facile approach to creating vertically oriented single and multilayer TEGs using materials like n-type Bi₂Te₃ and p-type Sb₂Te₃, as well as advanced superlattice structures. These devices convert waste heat into electricity, offering sustainable energy solutions for small-scale power generation and micro refrigeration. The multilayer TEGs demonstrated superior performance, achieving higher voltage, power output, and power density compared to single-layer counterparts. This breakthrough highlights the potential for scalable, efficient thin-film TEGs in commercial and niche applications, paving the way for greener energy technologies.
Dr. Mamadou Mbaye, a recent doctoral student in Dr. Bahoura's research group, has been awarded the prestigious American Society for Engineering Education Fellowship. This highly competitive fellowship recognizes Dr. Mbaye’s groundbreaking research titled Deep Learning-Enabled Discovery of Novel Magnetic Perovskite Materials. His work has the potential to revolutionize materials science and advance technologies in data storage, spintronics, and quantum computing.Dr. Mbaye's research focuses on utilizing deep learning models to explore the vast compositional and structural possibilities of magnetic perovskite materials, which make up 93% of the Earth's lower mantle. Despite their abundance and potential, only about 1,000 perovskite compounds have been synthesized to date. Dr. Mbaye aims to address this limitation by developing AI-powered tools capable of decoding the complex physics and chemistries of these materials, ultimately accelerating their discovery and optimization for practical applications.The broader implications of this work are immense. By leveraging artificial intelligence and computational physics, Dr. Mbaye's research paves the way for creating novel magnetic materials that could transform industries such as data storage, healthcare, transportation, and energy. His success underscores the university's commitment to fostering innovative research that drives scientific progress and economic growth.
Department of Engineering
Balakar Muniandi, Ph.D., Engineering Department faculty, has recently published a journal article, Bi-Directional Charging with V2L Integration for Optimal Energy Management in Electric Vehicles in Electronics 2024, volume 13. The paper investigates strategies to achieve intelligent charge-to-load architectures between electric vehicles, the power-grid, and other electrical loads. This research will aid the application of EV technologies within the framework of the national grid infrastructure.
The Engineering and Computer Science Departments have been awarded a one-year $50,000 grant from the Micron Foundation to conduct Microelectronics Bootcamps for first-year students. Sessions will be held in the spring and fall of 2025, and the sessions will feature hands-on activities, along with basic safety training, and an introduction to microelectronics as a field of study. Students will go through a full design and fabrication example, and they will receive novel micro-scale structures as well. The project leads include Drs. Patricia Mead, Felicia Doswell, Hargsoon Yoon, Thong Le, and Ms. Yolanda Hinton.
Congratulations to NSU student team W-A-V-E: Water, Agriculture, Vitality, and Energy, for their proposal to develop modular water purification units capable of using run-off flood water to provide usable water while also extracting nutrients for fertilizer or bio-energy applications. The team includes Curtis Jordan (CEO, BS.EEE), Jordan Simmons (BS.EEE), Nina Collymore (BS.BUS), and Duane Wright (BS.BUS). Their proposed WAVE units are based on a proprietary NASA technology and can be marketed to disaster relief agencies to provide clean drinking water to remote or disaster-stricken regions, while also supporting other critical functions (e.g. agriculture, energy, etc..). The team pitched their idea to a panel of experts, and they were selected to travel to Atlanta for a national competition in April 2025 where they will compete against other teams for a $30,000 prize.
Department of Biology
On November 18th the NSU SECUREs grant team hosted their 6th Annual Fall Research Symposium highlighting course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs). Seventy-five posters were presented by over 200 student researchers from Biology, Chemistry, Music and Political Science. This event marks the culmination of their semester-long research projects and is a great opportunity to practice presenting their research at a formal poster session. If you are interested in incorporating course-based research into your undergraduate courses, please feel free to reach out the SECUREs grant Program Director, Dr. Ashley Haines (anhaines@nsu.edu). Stipends are available for new faculty participants who meet the required deliverables, including having their students participate in the symposium.
Mrs. Maureen Scott and Mrs. Keirra Dillard-Wilkins and nine Biology undergraduate students continued the Department of Biology’s long tradition of scholarship and excellence by presenting their research at the 2024 Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania November 13-17. The following Biology students attended: Norsha Delk , Jayden Sanchez , Zavion Dawson , Emerald Hood, Briana Cassagnol, Faith T Dabney, Leah Butler, Nilah D. Ankrah, Brishai Williams.
The Department of Biology has focused on improving the research experience of students through implementation of course based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) across the curriculum. The following published article is a testament to the hard work of the faculty in the department in this regard. The publication by Dr. Ashley Haines and Dr. Barekzi with an external collaborator, Dr. John Curtis, from JWC Research, was published in Trends in Higher Education on November 19, 2024. Many biology department faculty supported this work, and several peer institutions reinforced this endeavor. The authors acknowledge in the publication the additional project team members for their contributions: Malikah Abdullah-Israel, Stephen M. Via, Kathryn F. Simmons, and Joseph D’Silva. Furthermore, the authors acknowledge the tremendous support and intellectual stimulation provided by many colleagues at peer institutions organized through the funding agency, Howard Hughes Medical Institute: James Madison University, The College of New Jersey, and Virginia Commonwealth University. The article can be found and cited as “Curtis, J. W., Haines, A. N., & Barekzi, N. (2024). The Impact of Community-Focused CUREs on Biology Student Identity, Persistence, and Career Outcomes at an HBCU. Trends in Higher Education, 3(4), 978-992.
Department of Computer Science
Four Computer Science undergraduates ( Victor "Silas" Morgan, Elijah Everett, Kemon Bynum, and Jordin Jones) successfully completed an open-source summer internship at the University of California Santa Cruz this past summer. The internship program, Contributor Catalyst, is an eight-week internship in which 4 weeks are residential on UCSC's campus. The internship pays for travel and housing at UCSC and provides the student with a stipend. Below is an article about the Contributor Catalyst program, featuring the NSU students who participated in this program. Please see article below:
https://news.ucsc.edu/2024/09/contributor-catalyst-grant.html
$1M NSF grant expands open source software mentorship program for HBCU students
A $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation will expand a program that enables students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to gain coding experience and receive intensive mentorship in open source programming.