��Ķ��vlog Receives $19,000 Consumers Energy Foundation Grant for Sustainable Futures STEM Academy

lmadaus — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:03:42 +0000

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

lmadaus Mon, 09/28/2026 - 09:03

��Ķ��vlog has received a $19,000 grant from the Consumers Energy Foundation to launch the Sustainable Futures STEM Academy, a one-year program beginning in October 2026 that will bring over 120 Michigan high school students to campus for three hands-on workshops focused on sustainability, energy analysis, waste reduction, and product design and manufacturing.

The investment extends the Consumers Energy Foundation’s longstanding support for education and workforce development in Michigan. Established in 1990, the Foundation supports efforts that build technical skills, expand career exploration, and prepare people for high-demand fields. In 2025, it awarded $7.8 million in grants impacting 662 nonprofits across the state.

“Michigan’s future depends on developing the talent and skills needed to address emerging challenges,” said Catherine Wilson, secretary and treasurer of the Consumers Energy Foundation. By giving young people the chance to explore STEM, we open a world of possibilities and career pathways while strengthening Michigan’s communities and economy.”

Dr. Farnaz Ghazi Nezami, associate professor and interim department head of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Kettering, is the project’s principal investigator.

“We want students, particularly those who may not have previously envisioned themselves in these fields, to build confidence in STEM, develop practical problem-solving skills, and see a pathway to college, technical training, and meaningful careers,” Ghazi Nezami said.

The academy draws on an educational approach that has defined ��Ķ��vlogfor more than a century: connecting rigorous academic learning directly to application. Every undergraduate alternates academic study with professional Co-op work and can graduate with up to 2.5 years of relevant experience. In the 2026 Launchpad Rankings, ��Ķ��vlogwas named the No. 1 undergraduate institution in America for the second consecutive year and ranked No. 1 nationally in experiential learning.

The university’s model also produces measurable value for the industry. More than 600 employers have participated in Kettering’s Co-op program, and student work has contributed to more than 100 patent applications, more than 1,500 documented corporate improvements, and an estimated $401 million in savings for employer partners.

A team of ��Ķ��vlogprofessors will create curriculum and assessment materials that can be used again, laying the groundwork for the initiative to reach additional schools in future years. Student reflections and pre- and post-workshop assessments will help document its impact and inform the program's development.

“My colleagues in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Dr. Sam Aljarrah and Dr. Ping Ren, are helping me develop the workshop modules, and my previous experience with a U.S. Department of Energy-funded Industrial Assessment Center has helped shape the curriculum,” Ghazi Nezami said. “We’re developing activities that show students how energy data, sustainability principles, and engineering tools are used to address real-world problems.”

For Ghazi Nezami, the measure of the academy’s success will extend beyond what students learn in the workshops to what they can imagine doing with that knowledge.

“We want to build their confidence and show them that STEM careers can allow them to make a meaningful difference in their communities and in Michigan’s future,” Ghazi Nezami said.

��Ķ��vlogTeam’s Paper Wins First Place at Smart Mobility Conference

eoboyle — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 19:55:21 +0000

��Ķ��vlogTeam’s Paper Wins First Place at Smart Mobility Conference

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

eoboyle Mon, 11/06/2023 - 14:55

Two ��Ķ��vlog professors and a graduate student authored a research paper that won first place at the Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM) Society International’s International Conference on Smart Mobility and Vehicle Electrification.

The paper, “Development of Electric Vehicle Simulation Model with DC BUS V/I-dependent Efficiency Map for Si IGBT and SiC MOSFET-based Traction Inverters,” describes a novel method for electric vehicle (EV) traction inverter simulation and power loss estimation using DC-dependent inverter efficiency maps.

Engineering graduate student Kenton Kyger ’25 and Assistant Professors of Electrical Engineering Dr. Chen Duan and Dr. Allan Taylor authored the paper. Kyger has been working as a graduate research assistant with the Electrical and Computer Engineering departments. They presented their work at the Oct. 10-12 conference in Southfield.

“It was nice to see this research be recognized for the impact that it is capable of producing on the future of EV simulation,” said Kyger, who earned his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from ��Ķ��vlog in 2023.

People commonly use inverter efficiency maps to simulate the inverter’s behavior. The research is important because many assembly-level EV simulations have long drive cycles, which makes it hard to embed inverter motor control simulations that require sub-0.001 second step sizes directly into the model and accurately model the performance of the inverter, and traditional inverter efficiency maps aren’t always available.

The method outlined by this research allows the creation of custom efficiency maps tailored to a particular application. The custom maps are then integrated into the overall simulation, which gives researchers more accurate and detailed results without increasing simulation time or compromising the level of detail the simulation can capture.

The team has been working on this project for about eight months.

Kyger said the biggest challenge was developing accurate power loss formulations for the traction inverters.

“It required some intense study on a short timeline to compile a thorough literature review of both long-established and new research to identify the sources of experimentality—and theoretically—derived power loss that would serve as the baseline for our power loss derivations,” he said.

Duan agreed that was a challenge.

“But, it was necessary as our assumptions of the proposed technology have to be proven theoretically,” he said. “Kenton did a great job diving deep into mathematics with Dr. Taylor’s help and my advice.”

Next, the team will take its approach and apply it to current EV simulation projects at Kettering, including the EV Kartz team’s competitive go-kart, to gather additional data and input parameters.

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Industrial Manufacturing and Engineering

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

���Ķ���vlog Receives $19,000 Consumers Energy Foundation Grant for Sustainable Futures STEM Academy

���Ķ���vlogTeam’s Paper Wins First Place at Smart Mobility Conference

��Ķ��vlog Receives $19,000 Consumers Energy Foundation Grant for Sustainable Futures STEM Academy

��Ķ��vlogTeam’s Paper Wins First Place at Smart Mobility Conference