FELLOWSHIPS

With the generous help from CEJS donors, we have been able to offer two annual research fellowships for students. The first is the Gary L. Chamberlain Fellowship, which honors the legacy of Professor Gary Chamberlain, whose work explored the intersection of theology and water justice. Students may also apply for the Francis Fellowship, which honors both St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and the environment, and Pope Francis who authored his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’.

The CEJS fellowships have also provided faculty the time and seed money they need to move their research forward. The CEJS Faculty Fellows publish books and journal articles as well as receive external grants based on their fellowship work. New Laudato Si’ faculty fellowships are being developed over the next year.

Henry Louie, PhD Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering

My work is in the area of energy access and the attendant concerns of energy equity and energy justice. More specifically, I focus on solar-powered off-grid electricity access to homes and communities where the power grid has yet to—and may never—reach. Much of my work has considered communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 500 million people do not have access to electricity. More recently, I have been working on energy access issues on Tribal Lands in North America.

As a CEJS Fellow, I developed data-driven statistical and time-series models of energy consumption of electric vehicles. In my present work I use these same data analysis techniques, but to model electricity consumption of off-grid homes on the Navajo Nation. This helps us understand how to better design off-grid systems, ensuring the batteries and solar panels are appropriately sized for the homes.

By Serena Cosgrove and Benjamin Curtis

I was awarded the CEJS faculty fellowship in AY 2016-17 for a proposal titled ‘Remote Environmental Monitoring using Internet of Things (IoT).’ At the time, I was just beginning to explore various applications of IoT technology and the possibility of monitoring environmental parameters remotely and in real time, was intriguing. The fellowship was instrumental in solidifying my interest in this area of research and has served as a catalyst for several related accomplishments.

Results from this work were presented at the 2016 NCUR conference (by a student researcher) and published and presented at the 2017 IEEE Global and Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC).

This worked paved the way for a collaboration with Seattle University’s chapter for Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW). I worked with undergraduate students to design an IoT-based water-quality sensor system that was successfully deployed at the aquaponic facilities in Instituto Superior Tecnológico Trentino Juan Pablo II, Manchay, Peru in March 2017; Zion Children’s home near Chiang Mai, Thailand in July 2017; and Washington Middle School and Rotary Boys and Girls Club in Seattle in June 2017.

My work on remote environmental monitoring laid the groundwork for a $250,000 grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation’s Undergraduate Education Program in January 2017. This grant supported the integration of IoT technology within the undergraduate ECE curriculum.

More recently, my research team designed a remote sensing system for groundwater monitoring in Morocco. The system is being deployed at a landfill in Berrechid for continuous monitoring of indicators related to emerging contaminants in groundwater.