Engineering celebrates $46M in public research investment

The college received a record $46 million in grant awards in the last fiscal year that ended in September. This represents a 200% increase over the past five years as UC tackles new frontiers in fields such as space exploration, energy, cybersecurity and disaster preparedness.

“These projects are all practical, for the benefit of society. They are making people’s lives better, safer and more productive,” Associate Dean Gautam Pillay said. “The grants allow our students to get cutting-edge training and that represents true workforce and economic development.”

Reflecting its expertise across departments, the college is the recipient of grants from a myriad of state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation.

And when President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022 to bring more microchip manufacturing back to the United States, federal agencies turned to UC researchers to get it done. UC partnered with Intel Corp. to train future workers for new semiconductor manufacturing jobs in Ohio and across the country with cutting-edge virtual reality and hands-on training in UC’s clean rooms.

“The federal investments are in specific areas where UC and the College of Engineering and Applied Science have proven expertise and where we’ve done significant hiring in those research areas,” Pillay said.

Students in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science work alongside faculty on projects that matter. And they get practical experience applying what they learned in labs and classrooms at companies around the world in UC's nationally renowned co-op program.

UC students earned a collective $88 million in co-op positions last year.

Among the projects from the past year:

UC Professor Lilit Yeghiazarian is developing solutions to improve the resilience of the U.S. power infrastructure. Her Water-Energy Nexus Open Knowledge Network, funded by the National Science Foundation’s open knowledge network, seeks to answer questions today’s and tomorrow’s threats to water and energy infrastructure, find ways to increase its resilience to natural disaster to ensure adequate supply and demand of water and power, and to identify the gaps in water and energy policies, rules and regulations. Yeghiazarian teaches and conducts research at UC’s Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department.

Aerospace engineering Professor Ou Ma received a grant from the Air Force Research Laboratory to develop satellites that can fix other satellites in space. Today, if a satellite malfunctions in orbit, which happens a lot, little can be done to address it. Unresponsive satellites can become flotsam that endangers other satellites.

In his Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems Lab, Ma is exploring the new field of in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing, with sweeping implications for national security and industry. He is collaborating with other universities and private aerospace companies to explore new ways of refueling, repairing or simply retrieving unresponsive satellites in orbit.

Professor Marc Cahay in UC’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is overseeing a grant from the Ohio Department of Higher Education to bolster the Ohio Cyber Range Institute, a collaborative network that supports cybersecurity programs across the state. Ohio is investing $6.5 million to help the institute purchase new equipment and expand training. Cahay is working on the project with institute director Rebekah Michael and co-directors Richard Harknett and Hazem Said.

Featured image at top: UC students use robotic laser scanners in Professor Ou Ma's aerospace engineering lab. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand