Wesley Williams

The first part of August had Helen and I attending the UMERC/METS conference in Duluth, Minnesota. It was my first trip to the area and I was impressed. The weather was great and it is fair to say that their lake is superior. North Carolina was well represented at the conference and we were happy to see WaterBros alum Abby McConnell there with the large Oregon State crew. I thought of App State as well on the trip as there was a solar racing vehicle on display in the MSP airport.

The end of the month, we gathered for food and games to mark the end of summer and the start of the fall semester. We were fortunate to have another WaterBro alum sighting as Allison File was in town and made it down for the food/fun.

The end of July brought great news that the collaboration with Dr. Michael Dickey in the Innovating Distributed Embedded Energy Prize (INDEEP) was one of the finalist in round 2 of the competition. We are stoked to expand the team and move into Phase III of the competition, building the individual DEECs into a larger metamaterial.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/articles/marine-energy-technology-innovators-receive-12-million-second-phase-prize

The Renewable Energy Mechanism group made the jaunt up to Boone, North Carolina for the Appalachian Energy Summit the first week in June. The students did a great job with their poster presentation, earning a best poster award for their presentation on the hypertwist generator research.

May brought the end of the semester, but the some solid conference travel to Oregon. TEAMER hosted a WEC workshop at Oregon State that featured software walkthroughs, in-tank testing, and a well curated ‘fungenda’. Bryson Robertson and Samantha Quinn put on a great event and special thanks to Courtney and Hannah for organizing the trip out to the Pacwave site.

Before exams and end of semester grading took over everyone’s lives, we were able to get the current students, former students, colleagues, and former colleagues over to the house for some food, chatting, and applications of applied probability. Special congrats to Jack who graduated with his BS in Mechanical Engineering this Spring Semester.

The team at the UNC Coastal Studies Institute hosted another great symposium April 8th and 9th for the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program. Mackay Burke, Naomi Diaz, Jack Doughty, Chase Pressley, and Bradley Wagoner made the trip from the Renewable Energy Mechanisms group as well as Helen Baginski, a visiting scholar from KIT in Germany. Beyond the technical presentations, the organizers also included a break for everyone to take in the partial solar eclipse.

I was glad to be in DC for Waterpower Week last week. It was good to see a lot of familiar faces and get updates on the various deployments and developments in the marine energy sector. I took a quick break between sessions to stop the the AMEC booth and grab a quick picture with Lindsay Dubbs from the UNC Coastal Studies Institute.