Thursday, February 28, 2008
UCSB Launches Energy Efficiency Institute
The University of Santa Barbara is launching a new Institute for Energy Efficiency today, in an effort to focus its faculty members on energy saving technology development at the school, the school said today. The school said the new institute, which will be headed by Professor John Bowers of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, will focus on accelerating the development and commercialization of energy-saving technologies. According to UCSB, the funding for the Institute was provided by a set of individual donors; the effort is expected to involve more than 50 faculty members from multiple disciplines on the campus. Bowers said in a released statement that UCSB is already spending more than $10M a year on energy efficiency research, and the effort is expected to triple research funding in energy efficiency over the next three years.