Idaho State University announces recipients for ISU CAES Seed Grant Program 

Ten Idaho State University researchers were awarded ISU CAES Seed Grants in December. The grants are awarded each year to collaborative research projects led by ISU researchers in collaboration with their peers from Idaho National Laboratory and the other CAES universities. Funding for the projects is intended to help the researchers develop research proposals with the potential to garner additional funding and comes from the portion of ISU’s annual state funding that is allocated for CAES activities.
Here is a list of the recipients: 

  • Amir Ali, assistant professor in ISU’s Nuclear Engineering Department, is collaborating with INL researcher Ahmed Hamed on a project titled, “Validation Experiments of CAES Developed Advanced Heat Exchanger Technology for Integrated Energy and Storage System Applications” 
  • Mostafa Fouda, assistant professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, has partnered with INL’s Mohammad Abdo on a project titled, “Effective Load and Generation Forecasts in Power Grids” 
  • Dan LaBrier, assistant professor in ISU’s Nuclear Engineering Department, is collaborating with fellow ISU researcher Chad Pope and INL researcher Bryce Kelly on a project titled, “Developing an Experiential Training Program for Use of Alkali Metals” 
  • Mustafa Mashal, associate professor in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department, is collaborating with fellow ISU researchers Jared Cantrell and Uma Shankar Medasetti and INL researcher Vaibhav Yadav on a project titled, “Methodology for Assessment of Performance Effectiveness of Mobile Robots for Nuclear Power Plant Security Applications” 
  • Rene Rodriguez, professor in the Chemistry Department, is collaborating with INL researcher Kiyo Fujimoto on a project titled, “Plasma Methods for Novel Advanced Manufacturing Feedstock Development” 
  • Chikashi Sato, professor in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department, is collaborating with ISU’s John Dudgeon and INL researcher Kunal Mondal on a project titled, “Integrating microbial fuel cell into algae cultivator for the development of sustainable energy-water-food system” 
  • Marco Schoen, professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department, is collaborating with INL researchers Andrew Gorman and Jorgen Rufner on a project titled, “Preliminary Reinforcement Learning Control for Continuous Spark Plasma Sintering” 
  • Glenn Thackray, professor in the Geosciences Department, is partnering with Boise State University’s Jennifer Pierce on a project titled, “Reliable Small-Hydropower Generation and the Consistency of Water Supply from Central Idaho Mountain Streams” 
  • Danny Xu, associate professor in the Biomedical & Pharmaceutical Sciences Department, is collaborating with INL researcher Eric Whiting on a project titled, “Hearing loss prevention through integrative high-performance computing and data science” 
  • Minhaz Zibran, associate professor in the Computer Science Department, is partnering ISU’s Farjana Eishita and INL researcher Rajiv Khadka on a project titled, “VizSoft: Interactive Visualization of Software Aspects in IDE”