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A recent $1.25 million award to West Virginia University will aid a project aimed at producing a higher amount of hydrogen gas – a clean fuel – with less electric power consumption. 

As alternative energy sources have become necessary to decrease global carbon emissions and meet growing energy demands, researchers at West Virginia University had ideas that came bubbling to the top—literally.

In 2014, around 10,000 gallons of a coal-washing chemical called MCHM spilled into the Elk River near Charleston, affecting 30,000 residents in nine counties.

Under the scorching sun on a May afternoon, workers wipe the sweat from their brows between pounding 10-inch greenish-yellow stems into the soil on a patch of land at the West Virginia University Agronomy Farm. It’s one of many sites – not just in West Virginia but surrounding states – where visions of a future fueled by biomass are engrained into mainly forgotten lands. It’s a vision of alternative fuels and safer, sustainable products, all at an economical price-point. In the Mid-Atlantic region alone, more than 8.5 million acres of mined and marginal agricultural property are primed for reclamation, said Jingxin Wang, professor of wood science and technology. Left alone, it’ll remain vast, empty space.

Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society, has selected 28 engineering students for graduate fellowships for the 2021-2022 academic year. West Virginia University Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources student Wilson “Will” McNeil was selected as one of the recipients. 

The large stationary radio telescope CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, has detected 535 fast radio bursts between 2018 and 2019, during its first year of operation. West Virginia University engineer Kevin Bandura explained FRBs are a key to understanding the universe a little bit more.

Anurag Srivastava has been selected as the Raymond J. Lane Chair of the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources at West Virginia University, effective July 1, 2021.

Srinivas Palanki, an expert in the area of process systems engineering with applications to chemical and biomedical processes, has been selected as chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources at West Virginia University, effective July 1, 2021.