The formation of the new Rensselaer Institute for Energy, the Built Environment, and Smart Systems (EBESS), was recently announced by Rensselaer President, Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson in response to President Joe Biden’s Call for Climate Action. The initial framework around a formal collaboration between LESA and Rensselaer’s Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE) has been ongoing but EBESS will fuse cutting-edge architectural design and innovative engineering to create sustainable infrastructure through the use of renewable energy systems, sentient building platforms, and new building materials. EBESS will also bring additional Rensselaer centers on board in areas related to energy, economics, and the tetherless world, among others working in the smart connected city space.The Student Perfect Pitch was created at LESA and traditionally held during the annual Industry-Academia Days each spring. In the past, the Perfect Pitch has had a tremendously positive impact as a training ground for our students and was broadly adopted by the National Science Foundation as a requirement for ERCs. The Perfect Pitch was revived as a way to showcase LESA and CASE’s exceptional students’ research during the constraints of the pandemic. The Student Perfect Pitch is a one slide/90-second elevator-pitch style presentation. Not only is this exercise important for professional development, but it is also a competition for a chance for them to win cash prizes. This year, eleven graduate students presented research topics related to smart and sustainable system integration with modern applications in the built environment, advanced sensors, and autonomous control. Their research topics also served as an introductory overview of what early EBESS research will encompass.
Student presenters were:
Group 1 Advanced Sensors
John Rollinson (LESA), Xing Tong (LESA), Hao Lu (LESA), Jason Case (LESA)
Group 2 Autonomous Control
Lingyu Zhang (LESA), Constantina Varsami (CASE), Pranav Shrestha (LESA), Diyanko Bhowmik (LESA)
Group 3 The Built Environment
Will Pepi (CASE), Bumsoo Park (LESA), Syed Ahsan Naqvi (LESA)