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Provided with an array of opportunities that only come with being selected to receive the prestigious —which includes studying, teaching, conducting research, exchanging ideas, and contributing to finding solutions to shared international concerns—three Illinois Institute of Technology faculty members will collaborate with colleagues at universities across the world over the next calendar year.

The three faculty members selected to participate include Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Cynthia Hood, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Carrie Hall, and Professor of Political Science Matt Shapiro.

Hood will go to Poznań University of Technology in Poland to collaborate on research and possibly teaching, all of which will be broadly centered on the resiliency of smart cities.

She’ll head to Poland in January 2023, where she will remain for six months while working with Adrian Kliks, an associate professor with the Institute of Radiocommunications at Poznań University of Technology, as well as Professor Vasyl Lytvyn and Professor Natalija Kunanets of Lviv Polytechnic National University in Ukraine.

�糵����; Lviv, Ukraine; and Poznań, Poland, like many cities around the world, have implemented information and communication technology to provide better services and quality of life to residents. Smart cities hold great promise, but to date the results have been mixed. Hood will conduct research with Kliks, Lytvyn, and Kunanets to see how technology can be used to improve resilience in smart cities

“The reasons for this gap are multifaceted, but the development of single-domain technology solutions and the need for increased interconnections and inclusion of the human and societal aspects seem to be common themes,” Hood says. “In addition events such as the pandemic, along with ongoing climate change, highlight the need for increased focus on resilience.”

Shapiro will spend the 2022–2023 academic year in Seoul, South Korea, to study the potential for green technology policy innovations in South Korea, and how those innovations could have an impact on global policy and collaboration around climate action. His Fulbright award supports new research into not only how South Korea can innovate to increase green technology policy collaborations with the U.S. and China, but also how, given existing tensions between the U.S. and China, South Korean policy works to avoid alienating the U.S. and China regarding possible economic and security concerns.

“To understand this fully I will interview key governmental personnel, scientists, researchers, and energy-oriented nonprofit organizations,” Shapiro says. “I will thus identify the motivations for specific policies and ultimately the mechanism(s) underlying Korea’s green technology-related innovation policy.”

The Fulbright Award will allow Hall to collaborate with researchers at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom on a project focused on harvesting wave energy as a renewable energy source. Researchers at Lancaster are working on a project that is investigating whether wave energy converters have the potential for global deployment. Current evaluations predict the power source could supply about 9 percent of global demand.

Hall plans to contribute to the project by leveraging her expertise in developing control systems for complex thermal systems to assist with the challenge of providing better control for wave energy converters in order to improve their efficiency and durability.

Most wave energy devices only capture energy in one direction, such as an up-down motion, but waves have some movement in multiple directions.

“One big challenge with controlling wave energy conversion devices is that the incoming waves vary, and we don't know in advance how big they'll be, when or in what direction exactly they'll hit the device. To best leverage wave energy, devices need to be able to capture energy in multiple directions and leverage state-of-the-art control and prediction methods to accommodate the varying wave conditions,” says Hall. “We deal with that uncertainty often in diesel engines, so that allows me to bring ideas about how to control a system with uncertainty from the automotive realm to wave energy conversion devices.”

The U.S. Department of State has established relationships with more than 160 countries through the Fulbright program. It offers international educational and cultural experiences for students, scholars, artists, and teachers to study, teach, and conduct research.