Research in Energy, Environment, and Sustainability is motivated at the macro level by the rapid rise in worldwide demand for electricity and related threats to the environment including global climate change and on the micro level by the explosion in the number of mobile devices and sensors whose performance and lifetimes are limited by energy. Work in this draws on a wide range of disciplines and approaches to address a variety of application domains including photonic energy conversion, engineering nanomaterials, advancing the scientific and technical foundations of geophysical radar, theory and simulations of photonic and solid-state materials, the design of dc-dc power converters working at MHz frequencies, power electronics, resonant converters, resonant gate drive techniques, high-frequency magnetics, power systems are in the integration of renewables, smart distribution systems, and demand-side data analytics,  wideband gap (WBG) and ultra-wide bandgap (UWBG) materials and device engineering for energy-efficient and compact system architecture for electronics including power RF, using technology to help solve the environmental issues, end-to-end IoT system to enable data-driven agriculture solutions, new and innovative materials, structures, and process technology of silicon, germanium and III-V devices and interconnects for VLSI and nanoelectronics, metal and optical interconnections and high efficiency and low cost solar cells, convex optimization applications in control, signal processing, machine learning, energy-efficient transistors, data storage (memory), and thermoelectrics, novel materials and nano structuring for high efficiency solar cells.

Energy Harvesting & Conversion: The study of electronics and photonics play a central role for energy harvesting and conversion. For example, the harvesting of solar energy requires significant advance in both electronics and photonics. In addition, the majority of electronics today are fundamentally limited by the energy they consume. Conversely, the availability of more varied energy sources would enable functionality and ubiquity of electronics not yet possible today. Even when power is readily available, some electronics must obey very strict thermal requirements, such as those that come in contact with the human body. Examples include:

• Thermoelectric nanomaterials for thermal energy harvesting;
• Fundamental research into the nanoscale physics of electron-phonon energy interaction;
• Heat-sensitive electronics and their interaction with strict temperature environments such as car engines, the human body, or extraterrestrial applications;
• Energy harvesting from vibrations (piezoelectrics), thermo-acoustic energy conversion, and chemical reactions;
• Renewable energy research including photovoltaics, thermophotovoltaics, and radiative cooling.

Environmental sensors, embedded systems, remote sensing

Research in Environmental Sensors, Embedded Systems, and Remote Sensing draws on a wide variety of scientific and engineering disciplines and approaches that advance the state-of-the-art in geoscience remote sensing instrumentation and technologies that improve knowledge for the betterment of society and the global environment.  This work often supports scientific investigations with the design and development of hardware (RF engineering, Microwave and mm-wave circuits, Antennas, active and passive microwave remote sensing, sensor networks) and data processing (applied EM, signal processing for remote sensing data, imaging, scattering modeling/theory) techniques used in geophysics, geology, hydrology, meteorology, and planetary science. Examples include operating systems, networks, and software design, especially for embedded systems, wireless technology such as battery-free sensing, low-cost low-power communication and IoT systems, the development and application of science-optimized geophysical radar systems, new techniques and tools, specifically new programming languages, compilers, and runtime systems, that enable end-users to more easily develop computations that exploit the potential of emerging computing platforms that exhibit analog behaviors, interferometric radar remote sensing applications and technique development, large-scale monitoring, sensor fusion, data analytics and stochastic control for infrastructure networks, low-power and smart-power ASICs, mixed-signal integrated circuit design, including sensor interfaces, data conversion, high-speed communication, and embedded machine learning, computational photography, low-power mixed-signal circuit design, next generation high capacity wireless networks using techniques from information and coding theory,  end-to-end design of high-performance RF and Microwave electronic systems, new physical phenomena, to designing electronic systems (with custom silicon ICs).