EE students Salman Inayat (Prof. Muhammad Hussain's Ph.D. student) and Mahmoud Ouda (Prof. Khaled Salama's Ph.D. student) have won the first and second prizes, respectively, in DOW Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge Award.
The winning research for Salman Inayat titled: "Thermoelectricity from windows for energy-efficient buildings". In this project, Salman develops the novel nanomaterial-based thermal electric device to harvest energy from the glass window. This work offers an opportunity to potentially generate >300 watts of usable power from 9 square meters window at a 20 degree C temperature gradient.
Mahmoud Ouda research is on the development of On-Chip RF Energy Harvesting modules to deliver power to wireless sensors from incoming RF signals. This module provides a platform for battery-less, miniaturized wireless sensors that can be implanted inside the human body to monitor physical properties such as pressure or temperature and send the reading wirelessly to an external reader. This work can find further application in biomedical implants, asset management, goods tracking in the supply chain, contactless smart cards, and wireless sensors in smart buildings and home automation.