A World of Dartmouth Energy Activities

DEC Energy World Cafe

On Thursday, February 20, the Top of the Hop space at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center for the Arts was the site of the Dartmouth Energy Collaborative's first "World Cafe" -style Energy Lunch Series event. While our typical DEC Lunches feature a speaker (or speakers) presenting to an audience followed by an opportunity to ask questions, the World Cafe format facilitates a more fluid, flexible interaction between presenters and audience. Attendees were invited to help themselves to snacks and visit the ten tables set up around the space to learn about the diverse and fascinating energy-related projects Dartmouth students are involved with. 

Participants included:

• The Dartmouth Energy Alliance: Dartmouth's new undergraduate energy club 
• Irving Institute Mini-Grant Recipients:
  • Kevin Yang '20, presenting on his research project exploring the structural capacities of mycelium as a novel and insulative material, as well as its ability to cleanse rainwater of acidity and nutrient deposition

  • Andrew Hamlin and Julia Huddy, Thayer graduate students who used grant funding to attend the Electrochemical Society Conference in Atlanta, GA

  • Haley Richards '20, who used mini-grant funding to support an unpaid internship where she researched and developed a wearable biomechanical energy harvesting device 

  • Rick Basak '20, who use mini-grant funding to defray his costs to attend the WindEurope Offshore 2019 conference in Denmark

  • Abigail Brazil '21, Mallory Byrd '19, Th'20, Marisa Magsarili '19, Ben Saccone '20, and Kevin Yang '20, who used mini-grant funding to travel to Alaska's Inian Islands Sustainability Institute to help install a micro-hyrdo generator

  • Katie Anderson, Earth Sciences graduate student, who used mini-grant funding to study hydropower resources, snow accumulation, and snowmelt in Mt. Hunter, Alaska

• The Dartmouth Energy Future Team: Mallory Byrd '19, Th'20, Kevin Yang '20, and Alex Derenchuck, Th: For Thayer's ENGS 89/90 capstone design class, the team worked as engineering consultant for Rosi Kerr, Dartmouth's Director of Sustainability, in a project looking at alternatives for the current Dartmouth heating system in pursuit of the College's Our Green Future emissions goals. The team studied a variety of heat production options (ex. No. 6 fuel oil, woodchips, ground source heat pumps, solar thermal, etc.) and built a model to allow for an optimal deployment of technologies at Dartmouth. 
• Junyang Ke TU'20, Tuck Fellow, working on a project, Energy Blockchain for Financing and Carbon Offsetting 
• Jennifer Chen '23 and Pierce Wilson '23, shared their experiences on the 2019 Gulf Coast Energy Immersion trip