Blue Economy

Innovating ways to power the blue economy

Capstone student teams win “Best Build,” “Best Pitch,” and “Best Poster” categories at the 2021 Marine Energy Collegiate Competition.

UMassD’s engineering capstone student teams won in the “Best Build,” “Best Pitch,” and “Best Poster” categories at the Marine Energy Collegiate Competition (MECC), which took place on April 28, 2021.

Dr. Banafsheh Seyed-Aghazadeh who is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of Laboratory for Fluid-Structure Interactions Studies at UMass Dartmouth mentored the team, Green Lobstahs. “Our multi-disciplinary team of students were asked to design a device that optimizes technology, reduces costs, and explores new opportunities for marine energy with the goal of powering the blue economy,” Dr. Seyed-Aghazadeh says. “Our team competed in this national competition against some of the best schools in the country and came away with two awards.”

The Green Lobstahs’ team members include mechanical engineering students Sarah Dulac, Andrea Elloian, Ross Jacques, Chandler Jardin, Kevin Raggiani, and Joseph Silveira; electrical engineering students Dylan Souza and Tyler Viera; and business students Darion Gregory and Alec Peinkofer of St. Bonaventure University. Dr. Konrad Jamro, an associate professor of Management & Marketing and co-founder of the Leadership Certificate Program at St. Bonaventure University, served as the collegiate team co-advisor. The team received additional mentorship from capstone course instructor at UMass Dartmouth, Dr. Hamed Samandari.

UMass Dartmouth and St. Bonaventure University came together to contribute to an original design idea of a “Vertical Axis Wind Turbine and an Underwater Current Turbine” housed on a stable offshore floating platform. The team developed a business plan for their proposed solution to power the blue economy and pitched their market assessment and detailed technology design to a team of judges during the two-day competition event, which earned the team the award of the Best Pitch in this competition.

“This design aims to fulfill the need that aquaculture farms have for sustainable and eco-friendly energy sources,” says Seyed-Aghazadeh.

“By utilizing the copious supply of offshore energy that resides in the form of wind and current energy, our design aims to produce a consistent and reliable energy source that will help to grow and expand the blue economy.”