PROJECTS

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) has aggressively positioned itself to tackle the issues of energy science at both the material and resource level and at the level of the individual investigator. In particular, through the creation of the Sustainable Energy Education and Research Center (SEERC), the university has created a unique research and education environment where experts in various areas of sustainable energy work in a collaborative environment to enable critical breakthroughs in parallel. As participants in the education center, SEERC investigators recently obtained an NSF IGERT grant to create a novel cross-training environment for graduate students to conduct sustainable energy research as part of interdisciplinary teams from engineering and the life and physical sciences. As a research center, SEERC has taken a leadership role in coordinating the development of inter-College proposals in the sustainable energy area. SEERC also provides starter grants to promote the initiation of research collaborations to address energy sustainability challenges. Currently, the research priorities of SEERC investigators are: (i) Advanced Materials for Energy Applications (ii) Bio- Fuels (iii) Energy Conversion and Storage, and (iv) Sustainability Science. A frame work is also being developed to allow newer areas to be established and phase out areas that have met their goals.