All the technologies that we hope to turn our future greener and better use material resources including some of the most exotic ones. Low-carbon energy technologies (LCETs) including Photovoltaics (PVs), wind turbines, hybrid and battery electric vehicles, fuel cells, and Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) help reduce our reliance on fossil energy, while they consume various material resources including Tellurium, Indium, Gallium, Neodymium, Dysprosium, Samarium, and Lithium among others.

In this talk  we  present  a vision of Dynamic Monitoring and Decision Systems (DYMONDS) as a possible  Information Communications Technology (ICT) framework in support of sustainable energy systems. The concept rests on the idea that much could be gained by relaxing spatial and temporal decomposition assumptions underlying today's hierarchical electric power systems.

Thermoelectric materials for energy generation have several advantages over conventional power cycles including lack of moving parts, silent operation, miniaturizability, and CO2 free conversion of heat to electricity.

Imagine if all the data traveling throughout the world right now—on long distance networks and between and within computers and other hardware—could be sent through a single fiber the width of a human hair.  In this talk we will present the vision and current research being performed under a newly launched center at UCSB, whose mission is to make this a reality by developing technologies necessary for a new generation of Ethernet a thousand times faster, and much more energy efficient than the most advanced networks being deployed today.

In this talk I give an overview of the algorithms we have developed at UCSD to significantly lower the energy consumption in computing systems. We derived optimal power management strategies for stationary workloads that have been implemented both in HW and SW. Run-time adaptation can be done via an online learning algorithm that selects among a set of policies. We generalize the algorithm to include thermal management since we found that minimizing the power consumption does not necessarily reduce the overall energy costs.

This tutorial will summarize key developments at the local (i.e. California), national, and global levels with respect to the current status of the energy crisis, investments in alternative energy, the need for further research and development, and the policy and regulatory framework.  For obvious reasons, this will not be a comprehensive review.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s largest and most energetic laser system built for studying inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and high-energy-density (HED) science, is now operational at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). NIF’s 192 beams are configured to create pressures as high as 100 GB, matter temperatures approaching 10^9 and densities over 1000 g/cmm^3. With these capabilities, the NIF will enable exploring scientific problems in strategic defense, basic science and fusion energy.

The modeling, simulation and analysis of integrated building energy and control systems that significantly reduce energy consumption poses challenges that are not well addressed by standard building simulation pro- grams. This seminar discusses how modular system modeling based on the object-oriented equation-based Modelica language and on co-simulation can address these challenges. We demonstrate applications that are enabled by this new approach and that are outside the scope of standard building simulation programs.

Recent advances in photonics and directed energy systems now allow us to realize what was only a decade ago, simply science fiction. It is no longer. Spacecraft from fully-functional gram-level wafer-scale systems (“wafer sats”) capable of speeds greater than ¼ c  that could reach the nearest star in  20 years to spacecraft for large missions capable of supporting human life with masses more than 105 kg (100 tons) that could reach speeds of greater than 1000 km/s can be realized.

The United Nations has declared 2015 as the International Year of Light in order to recognize the importance of raising global awareness about how light-based technologies promote sustainable development and provide solutions to global challenges in energy, education, agriculture and health.