Note to news directors and editors: To arrange an interview with CSULA Professor
Crist Khachikian regarding the University’s Center for Energy and Sustainability,
please contact the CSULA Public Affairs office at (323) 343-3050.
$1.7 million powers up Cal State L.A.’s Center for Energy and Sustainability
Federal funding to renovate campus facility
to advance science, engineering, technology research
Los Angeles, CA – Building upon the University’s reputation for excellence in teaching and research in engineering and the sciences, California State University, Los Angeles has been awarded a three-year, $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a core facility to boost research activities for the University’s recently-launched Center for Energy and Sustainability (CEaS).
Cal State L.A.’s CEaS Fellow Tawana Guillaume (in yellow) explains her combustion experiment to local schoolchildren during the 2010 National Lab Day on campus.
CEaS was established in fall 2009 through a five-year, $5 million NSF Centers for Research Experience in Science and Technology (CREST) grant. This multidisciplinary science and technology research center encompasses four areas of study: fuel cells; photovoltaic cells (high-efficiency cells); combustion (burning diverse fuels and examining combustion efficiency); and carbon sequestration (capturing carbon from the atmosphere and pumping it into the ocean or the land).
To begin this fall, approximately 9,500 square feet of research space in the University’s Engineering and Technology building will be reconfigured and modernized to comprise the core energy and sustainability research facility in environment, materials, and advanced technology.
“Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the NSF funding will enable CEaS faculty and students at Cal State L.A. to conduct innovative research in a newly renovated facility that is highly conducive to multidisciplinary collaborations,” said Crist Khachikian, the grant’s principal investigator, the CEaS director, and a professor of civil engineering at Cal State L.A.
“Research in energy and sustainability is a core multidisciplinary, multi-investigator activity within the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology that involves collaborations between faculty from biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, physics, and technology,” he said. “Furthermore, the new facility will provide opportunities to draw more undergraduate and graduate students into science, engineering, and technology research.”
The modernized CEaS facility will also be used for summer research programs for middle and high schools students and teachers, and community college students.
For a complete list of CSULA faculty associated with CEaS, go to http://ceas.calstatela.edu/people.
For details on the NSF award, go to http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0963539.
For more about CEaS, go to http://ceas.calstatela.edu/about-ceas or call (323) 343-5399.
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Working for Californiaa since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 215,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six Colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12. Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu