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The University of Michigan is home to hundreds of innovative researchers and entrepreneurs. And much of the work done on thiscampus goes on to impact lives all around the world. Here are twelve of the best ideas to come from the University in the past year.

WATER-LOVING, OIL-HATINGAs the recent fiasco in the Gulf of Mexicoillustrated, it’s slow work getting oil outof a large body of water. But a group ofresearchers at the University might have aquicker solution.Working alongside two of his students,

Material Science and Engineering Prof.‘: • -Anish Tuteja has developed a method of

extracting oil from water that his researchteam only half-jokingly refers to as a“gigantic strainer.”Tuteja’s work involves a “dip-coding”

process in which commercially availableporous materials like cloth or polyesterfabrics are covered in a thin layer of theartificial membrane that Tuteja and hisresearchers have been perfecting sincelast October.The membrane then acts as a strainer,

holding back oil while enabling water topass through.

‘“It’s water-loving and oil-hating at

the same time,” ArUI Kota, one of the

researchers on the project, said of the artificial membrane.According to Tuteja, the idea of oil-

water separation is completely counterintuitive.“Take any surface in nature and if you

put water through it, oil will come too,”Tuteja said. Nevertheless, “the idea wasthere as to what we thought might work,and the proof was really to show that itworks.”Tuteja’s membrane involves a mixture

of two elements: an oil-repellant nanopartide and a “water-loving” plastic.“We have to mix them in the right

quantity that it can pull the water downbut push the oil :‘ Tuteja said.Tuteja and his researchers searched for

that ideal balance through a months-longprocess of trial and error.According to Kota, the membrane is

now almost flawless, with recent testsextracting 99% oil from oil-water mix-tures.

However, the technology has yet to betested outside of a small laboratory set-ting.As Tuteja explained, larger-scale tests

can only occur once the technology gainsvisibility.To that end, Tuteja and his team plan

to publish the results of their research in a“high-impact journal” and have also fileda patent, Tuteja said.Tuteja said he hopes the “dip-coding”

process can be used to aid situations likethe recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.As Tuteja pointed out, massive quanti

ties ofoil from the Gulf spill sank beneaththe surface of the ocean and merged withthe water, giving the appearance ofa cleansurface.“On the surface the ocean looks clean,

but underneath there’s plumes and plumesof this oil-water mixture,” Tuteja said.“Right now all they’re doing is skimmingthe top.”But Kota said the new membrane can

Research associateArun Kota (left),Material Scienceand Engineer-ing Prof. AnishTuteja (center) andresearcher associateGibum Kwon (right)in their laboratoryintheH. H.Dowbuilding on NorthCampus wherethey carried out themajority of theirresearch on materials to seperate outoil from water.

I MAX COLLINS/Doily

easily tackle such underwater mixtures.“We have excellent separation happen-

ing,” Kota said.— DYLAN CINTI

VEH IcLE-To-GRIDAutomobiles serve as means of trinsportation from point A to point B. But is that allthey can be used for?“If you could use a car for something

more than just getting to work or going ona family vacation, it would be a whole different way to think about a vehicle:’ Engineering professor Jeff Stein wrote in a pressrelease.Stein serves as project director of a team

of 10 other University professors who arecollaborating on a four-year mission —

with funding awarded from the NationalScience Foundation — to reinvent the waywe think about the automobile.“We’re trying to develop mathematical-

based tools that will help people be able todesign the future vehicles so that they getgood mileage, get good range, make gooduse of the electricity. . .and try to reduce theamount of pollution that is produced’ hesaid.Oneof Stein’s research projects is a

concept called vehicle-to-grid integration.Stein’s team is looking at tapping into avehicle’s potential to store andfeed electric-ity back into the grid even while the vehiclesits idle in the garage.Right now, the electrical grid — what

we plug everything from a microwave to alaptop into — operates in an “on demand”system. That is, the electricity utilities onlycreate the exact amount of energy neededat the time they are being used. However,if there are a lot of vehicles that are sittingin garages,all with large batteries that storeelectrical energy, Stein believes they couldtemporarily store energy to be used at alater time to power other types of electric-ity.Stein labels unpredictable energy, like

wind and solar energy, “intermittent enerfly” because it occurs sporadically in largespurts. Stein thinks energy created duringthese spurts could be transferred to andstored in large car batteries to be used later,rather than simply going to waste since itis not needed at that specific time. It couldthen be transferred to the electrical grid topower microwaves and laptops.

“The vehicles we have now provide free-dom and meet the needs of individuals,”Stein said in the press release. “(Hybrid andelectric vehicles) can be a completely different way of using a car, to be somethingthat is defined as being a part of the greatergood in concert with others. It has fascinating possibilities.”

— CHELSEA LANGE

MICROCONTROLLERSAmbiq Micro, a startup company foundedby University graduates and professors, hasrecently gained national attention for itswork that could potentially usher in a newera in computing.The company’s co-founders — Rossuates Scott Hanson, David Landmanand Philip O’Neil and Engineering professors Dennis Sylvester and David Blaauw —

have developed what they call the world’smost energy-efficient microcontroller. Theybelieve this new technology will complete-ly transform the way users interact withcomputers in an everyday environment.“Microcontrollers — or MCU’s — you

can think of them as a scaled down version of the microprocessors you would findinside your laptops,” O’Neil said in a presentation about the new microcontrollers atRice University. “MCUs are used in manydifferent applications that we interact withon a daily basis, from our cell phones toour watches to our cars. And although theyare becoming more pervasive over time,we believe that the next five to 10 yearsis where we’re really going to see thembecome ubiquitous”The company’s founders say that, while

current computing is on a one to one ratio— where users interact with computers ona personal level with a handheld device or alaptop — the future will see computing in amuch more advanced scale, with microprocessors installed in items anywhere fromthe paint on our walls to the clothes on ourbacks.As part of that future, Ambiq Micro

believes there will be a need for smaller,more energy-efficient microprocessors likethe company’s microcontrollers.The company’s energy-efficient micro-

controllers will also greatly increase thebattery life of the products in which theyare used, an innovation that has not yet beenseen in the market of microprocessors.

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