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At a U.S. Army base command center, a computer beeps and displays a warning: the power has gone down in one corner of the base. Cybersecurity experts jump into action. They ensure critical systems are on backup generators as they search for the reason for the outage. One of them points to her screen and calls out that the power grid’s information system has been compromised—a cyber attack is likely underway.

Integrating renewable energy with the power grid continues to be a big challenge for the electrical grid infrastructure in the United States. While the solution isn’t simple, it’s not impossible either, and researchers from West Virginia University have been competitively awarded $7.5 million from the United States Department of Energy to help solve a critical part of the problem.

The online software engineering graduate program at West Virginia University has been recognized as the 28th Best Online Program by U.S. News and World Report. 

Ali Baheri and Piyush Mehta, professors in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at West Virginia University, have received a $100,000 grant from NASA EPSCoR Rapid Response Research (R3) program to explore the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for onboard fault diagnosis of spacecraft.

The space economy is on track to be valued at a trillion dollars by the end of 2030, according to Piyush Mehta, Wayne and Kathy Richards Faculty Fellow and assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at West Virginia University. Yet space assets – equipment that is placed in space such as navigation, weather and communication satellites that serve our society daily – are threatened by space debris. 

Despite efforts to promote recycling and reuse of plastic materials, the plastic problem continues to be a global problem. West Virginia University engineers hope to debottleneck the remaining challenges for recycling of single-use plastic packaging by upcycling them into petrochemicals.

A West Virginia University graduate student has been awarded the University Transportation Centers Annual Outstanding Student of the Year for research in collecting and harvesting traffic and pavement data to find intelligent solutions for sustainable transportation infrastructure management.

A new report by the National Science Foundation ranked the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources 87th in research expenditures among 411 engineering programs surveyed.