VIDEO: The latest green tech innovation from UCLA engineers

The Henry Samuel School of Engineering and Applied Science, known as the birthplace of the internet, is leading innovation in areas like green technology, smart grid energy, healthcare, water desalination, wireless sensing and networking, cyber security, and nanotechnology.

James Liao, a Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, is helping to wage war against fossil fuel dependence by finding more effective means of making biofuels. He believes, “engineers have a responsibility as well as the ability” to solve the energy crisis. His current research involves storing sunlight in a carbon compound to convert CO2 into fuel. Rather than letting a cell grow its own cell mass, he seeks to convert fixed CO2 into an isofuel using a metabolic engineering approach.

Richard Wirz, an Assistant Professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is also seeking unique ways of enhancing energy storage. He believes wind and solar power hold the most promise, because, “if you’re going to want to make a terawatt level impact, a huge impact, you look at wind energy and you look at solar energy - those are the two that really have the potential to make a huge impact.”

He compares the growing pains of current energy development to the evolution of airplane technology by explaining, “when we built airplanes... they were terribly uncomfortable, they were inefficient.” To remedy this inefficiency, Richard Wirz is working on extending the capability of plasma devices by modifying their thermal systems via supercritical liquid vapors. By heating up fluids in tandem with high pressure, they can be made supercritical, existing simultaneously in a liquid and a vapor state. This liquid vapor state compresses volume, thus reducing the volume needed to store energy in the plasma installed on wind turbines.

In the realm of health and technology, Deborah Estrin, a Distinguished Professor of computer science, is leading innovation in the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing. She focuses on participatory sensing development, using the impactful scalability of mobile phones in tandem with personalized healthcare solutions. Her project, mHealth, allows doctors and their patients to interact in a way that paints a richer picture of responses to treatments. She is also applying her findings in technology interactivity in the LAUSD classrooms.