Event
Microsystems@Maryland Seminar: Paul Mitcheson, Energy Harvesting
Thursday, November 11, 2010
4:00 p.m.
1146 A V Williams Bldg
Regina King
301 405 6615
rking12@umd.edu
Microsystems@Maryland Seminar Series
Energy Harvesting Research at Imperial College London: A Holistic View
Paul Mitcheson
Imperial College London
Abstract
Imperial College London has a relatively large research program in the area of energy harvesting and micro power generation, with around 6 full time researchers and 5 faculty members interested in the subject. We started our work in 2001 investigating ways to power device on, or in, the human body using MEMS technology. Since then we have prototyped devices to harvest energy from larger rotating machines, air flows and for wireless sensor networks in marine environments and we still have an activity in MEMS harvesters where we are now prototyping a tunable device. In this talk I will give an overview of this work and concentrate on the need to take a systems level approach to designing energy harvesting devices due to the difficult design trade-offs in this multidisciplinary subject.
Biography
Paul Mitcheson received the MEng and PhD degrees from Imperial College London in 2001 and 2005 respectively. He joined the faculty of the department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial in 2006. His research interests are in the areas of energy harvesting and power electronics.
