NSF Award
2413138
Oceans cover over 70% of the Earth's surface and their ceaseless movement from tides, waves, and currents creates a potentially important energy source that could be an important component of the energy transition for coastal and island communities. Similarly, the constant cycling of onshore and offshore winds over the course of a 24-hour period creates an additional marine related source of green, renewable energy. The Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC), the Center for Growing Ocean Energy Technologies and the Blue Economy (GO Blue) engages in faculty-driven/industry-relevant, basic, use-inspired research focused on creating new knowledge and innovations of value to industries and start-ups in the marine energy ecosystem. Created by three universities: the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the Stevens Institute of Technology; and Texas A&M University at Corpus Christie, this national Center has the potential to address critical problems and issues that are holding the economy back from realizing economically viable electricity coming from marine and coastal marine-related energy sources that generate electricity to feed the national power grid. Broader impacts of the Center include the creation of new knowledge and solving of technical problems and socio-economic issues associated with marine electrical energy generation, close collaboration between university faculty and students and industry, training students in innovation; entrepreneurship; and workforce and workplace safety, and developing new educational programs to build the marine energy workforce of the future. Other impacts include engaging groups underrepresented in science and engineering in marine energy pursuits and public outreach and community engagement around marine energy issues. <br/><br/>The Go Blue Industry-University Cooperative Research Center will harness the expertise of over 30 faculty and researchers from three universities and engage their students and postdocs in basic but industry-need-inspired research. Engineering research in this center will be inherently multidisciplinary spanning the fields of electrical, mechanical, civil, ocean, materials, and environmental engineering.This multi-university collaboration provides expanded access to world-class schools of naval architecture and engineering, state-of-the-art ocean technology test facilities, and computational facilities to Center faculty and students, regardless of home institution, as well as to members of the Center Advisory Board through faculty-initiated research projects of high priority to the marine energy economic sector. The geographical distribution of the three partner universities: The Great Lakes (Michigan), ocean (Stevens Institute), Gulf of Mexico (Texas A&M Corpus Christi), creates a national ensemble that allows the Center to tackle and experiment with new ideas, technology, and energy implementation scenarios in vastly different marine/coastal/large freshwater lake environments and settings. Center research ideas come from faculty who listen to the needs of the marine energy economic sector, as represented by dues-paying members of the Center Advisory Board. Faculty research is funded by pooled Advisory Board membership fees for projects of high priority to the sector, as indicated by the collective members of the Center Advisory Board. Center research thrusts are marine energy technology for renewable energy production, powering the blue economy which includes power generation and marine transport, and marine energy societal acceptance; economic viability; and environmental sustainability.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
