Paper on Solid-State Electrothermal Interconversion Featured in MRS Bulletin

By Giorgina Paiella

MSE Department Head Dr. S. Pamir Alpay is part of a research team that has published a paper on the future of solid-state cooling technology.

The paper, “Next-Generation Electrocaloric and Pyrocaloric Materials for Solid-State Electrothermal Interconversion,” was published in the December issue of the Materials Research Society (MRS) Bulletin.

It details thin-film electrocaloric and pyroelectric electrothermal interconversion energy sources that have recently emerged as promising for solid-state cooling and power generation. These newer materials are favorable in the conversion of thermal to electrical energy because they support larger electric fields and therefore allow for operation at higher voltages. The authors provide an overview of current state-of-the-art materials, thermodynamic cycles, and future directions for electrothermal interconversion research.

Dr. Alpay authored the paper with Dr. Joseph Mantese (MSE Industrial Advisory Board and United Technologies Research Fellow), Dr. Susan Trolier-McKinstry (Pennsylvania State University), Dr. Qiming Zhang (Pennsylvania State University), and Roger W. Whatmore (Imperial College London).

Professor Michel Chairing the Constraint Programming Track for ICS Conference

Professor Laurent Michel is Chairing the Constraint Programming stream for the 2015 INFORMS Computing Society Conference to be held in Richmond Virginia in January.

Constraint Programming focuses on solving hard combinatorial optimization problems at the heart of many industrial applications including resource allocation, scheduling, planning, manufacturing as well as verification.

According to the Society’s website, The INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) focuses on the interface of Operations Research (OR) and computing. Since their earliest days, OR and computing have been tightly linked. The practice of OR depends heavily on the availability of software and systems capable of solving industrial-scale problems: computing is the heart of OR in application.

ICS is INFORMS’ leading edge for computation and technology. Major ICS interests are algorithms and software for modeling, optimization, and simulation. The society is also interested in the advanced progression of computing and how it affects OR (e.g., OR services offered over the web, open source software, constraint programming, massively parallel computing, and high performance computing