Women in Engineering

Photonics; Aerospace & Electronics Systems Societies and Women in Engineering

6:30 PM, Thursday, 13 June

Silicon Nanowires, Enabling Low Cost Photovoltaic Electricity

Marcie Black, Bandgap Engineering

Silicon nanowires can improve the optical properties of silicon solar cells, but commonly-held concerns about the effects of nanostructuring on device performance have limited their adoption. Here we present experimental results of our design and processing innovations applied to silicon-nanowire solar cells that confirm the excellent anti-reflection and absorption benefits, demonstrate high minority carrier lifetime and efficiencies >18%. Nanowires enhance the efficiency of crystalline silicon solar cells by reducing reflection over a broad range of incident wavelengths and angles: measured reflection is less than 1% for a weighted average over the solar spectrum. Furthermore, the nanowires increase the optical path length within the device, allowing the absorption of the silicon to approach the Lambertian limit for light trapping. This increased absorption improves efficiency for standard thickness cells (mainly in the infrared), as well as significantly increasing the amount of light absorbed in thin crystalline silicon cells. Our nanowire fabrication process is independent of crystallographic orientation and overall is especially well-suited for multicrystalline and thin crystalline silicon cells. Our nanowire solar cells are fabricated with a low-cost process and we will discuss the benefits of integrating them into existing solar cell production lines and how they can potentially increase the efficiency by 1% or more absolute and reduce costs by $0.05 – 0.10/Wp. We will also present how our nanowires enable several manufacturing improvements such as thin wafers, N-type wafers, passivated back contacts and plated front metal contacts to enable further cost and performance advantages with crystalline silicon wafers.

Marcie Black Photo Marcie Black is the co- founder and CTO of Bandgap Engineering. Bandgap Engineering is an early stage start-up seeking to commercialize high efficiency silicon solar cells. Dr. Black has dedicated her career to making renewable energy more cost effective. She has more than twenty years of technical experience in the semiconductor, opto-electronic, and solar energy industries. Before joining Bandgap Engineering, Marcie was a technical staff member at the Applied Electromagnetics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and worked on a variety of nanotechnology initiatives, optical systems, and photovoltaic projects. Prior to her PhD work at MIT, she was a device engineer at Motorola. In 2009, she was awarded an R&D 100 award for her contributions to work at LANL. In March 2010, Marcie was honored as one of the ten “Women to Watch in 2010” by Mass High Tech. She earned her PhD on the optical properties of bismuth nanowires in 2003 and her Masters of Engineering in 1995 on polysilicon optical waveguides, both from MIT’s Electrical Engineering department. Dr. Black has worked on thin film silicon, organic, quantum dot, and several other solar cell technologies and is the inventor of the Bandgap Activation approach applied to photovoltaics. She has published over 30 articles in peer- reviewed journals and 4 book sections, has had 8 patents issue with many more patents pending.

This meeting begins at 6:30 PM Thursday, June 13th, 2013 and will be located in the cafeteria at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, 244 Wood Street, Lexington, MA 02420. The meeting is free and open to the public. All are welcome. Prior to the seminar there will be social time and networking from 6:30 - 7:00PM in the MIT Lincoln Laboratory cafeteria, the seminar will begin at 7:00PM. For more information contact David Scherer, Boston IEEE Photonics Society Chapter chair at dscherer@symmetricom.com, or visit the Boston IEEE Photonics Society website at www.bostonphotonics.org.

Directions to Lincoln Laboratory: (from interstate I-95/Route 128)

From Exit 31B: Take Exit 31B onto Routes 4/225 towards Bedford - Stay in right lane; Use Right Turning Lane (0.3 mile from exit) to access Hartwell Ave. at 1st Traffic Light; Follow Hartwell Ave. to Wood St. (~1.3 miles); Turn Left on to Wood Street and Drive for 0.3 of a mile; Turn Right into MIT Lincoln Lab at the Wood Street Gate; Have a valid driver’s license to present to security.

From Exit 30B: Take Exit 30B on to Route 2A - Stay in right lane; Turn Right on to Mass. Ave (~ 0.4 miles - opposite Minuteman Tech.); Follow Mass. Ave for ~ 0.4 miles; Turn Left on to Wood Street and Drive for 1.0 mile; Turn Left into MIT Lincoln Lab at the Wood Street Gate; Have a valid driver’s license to present to security.

All attendees must present a valid driver's license to MIT Lincoln Laboratory security. To get to the Cafeteria, proceed toward the Main Entrance of Lincoln Laboratory. Before entering the building, proceed down the stairs located to the left of the Main Entrance. Turn right at the bottom of the stairs and enter the building through the Cafeteria entrance. The Cafeteria is located directly ahead.

Education Society and Women in Engineering

3:00 PM, Tuesday, 9 April

Smart City

What is a Smart City? At Schneider Electric, we define a smart city as efficient, sustainable and liveable.

Efficient means improving the efficiency of a city’s underlying urban infrastructures – its water network, its gas network, its electricity network, its transportation systems, its emergency response systems, its buildings, its hospitals, its public services etc.

Sustainable means reducing the environmental consequences of urban life – reducing the city’s carbon emissions, regenerating some districts, planting trees, creating parks, planning the city differently.

Finally, liveable means becoming a more pleasant place to live, work and play – for its residents as well as for its visitors and commuters. Attractiveness matters – it means building the talent-pool the city needs, the housing market its people needs, providing the cultural events that bring the spotlights.

Schneider Electric’s unique, collaborative approach

Solutions to cities' immediate challenges,
Integration for increased efficiency,
Innovation for a holistic sustainable future,
Collaboration to make it all happen.

Suad Mohamed, Principal Engineer, Schneider Electric Industry Business. Suad is a key technical contributor to the Schneider Electric projects. In her role she is responsible for architecture, design, implementation, and test of the firmware. Suad has been working for Schneider Electric for the last 5 years. Prior to that Suad worked at a number of high-tech companies in the area of networking and high availability as a technical lead and individual contributor; including Lakeview Technology, IronBridge Networks, Cereva Networks Inc., and Availant Inc. Suad Holds MS. in Computer Science and BS in Electrical Engineering.

Sunita Patel is a Principal Verification Engineer/Associate Lead for Schneider Electric, North Andover, USA. She has Progressive 10 years of professional experience in Software Development life cycle. Moreover, throughout her career she has been developing test strategy for testing process, testing scenarios, test plan along with reporting & analyzing test results. Also she automates the software Test Tool, using the scripts like Perl, PHP and brings uniformity to the process. Sunita has been working for Schneider Electric for the last 6 years. Prior to joining Schneider Electric, she was a Software Test Engineer at a high-tech company including Cognex Corporation and Nortel Networks. Sunita holds a B.S Degree in Computer Science. Also taken Courses towards Information Technology from Boston University, USA.

Meeting is being held Tuesday, April 9 from 3:00 – 4:15 PM at 161 College Avenue, Medford Ma, Halligan Hall room 111A

Parking: Tufts University Garage on Boston Avenue

Society on Social Implications of Technology; Women in Engineering and Solid State Circuit Societies

7:00 PM, Thursday, 4 April (Registration encouraged)

Engineers Without Borders

Northeastern University Student Chapter

The Northeastern University Chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB-NEU) was organized in 2005 to provide assistance to developing countries to construct infrastructure facilities to improve health and lifestyle. The focus of the projects is sustainability – involving aid recipients in design and construction activities so that they can then maintain the facilities on their own. To date, EWB-NEU has focused on water projects, constructing 4 gravity flow systems for villages in Honduras and rainwater catchment systems and boreholes for a village in Uganda. The chapter is currently designing two pumped distribution systems, one each in Honduras and Uganda. The Honduras system will be powered with electricity off the national grid while the Uganda system will be powered by a diesel generator.

The talk will present the Chapter background and describe the Honduras and Uganda projects including successes and challenges encountered in the process. Addressing technical and cultural issues are both keys to successful projects.

Engineers Without Borders USA has 180 student chapters in the United States working on sustainable development projects across the world. “Our VISION is a world in which the communities we serve have the capacity to sustainably meet their basic human needs, and that our members have enriched global perspectives through the innovative professional educational opportunities that the EWB-USA program provides.”

This meeting is free and open to the public. It will be held 7 – 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 2013 at the Boston campus of Northeastern University, 458 Richards Hall on Krentzman Quad. For more information, please contact Emily Anesta, eanesta@ieee.org, (781) 981-6731, or visit the IEEE website at http://www.ieeeboston.org/. Refreshments will be provided at the meeting.

This meeting is free and open to the public but registration is encouraged via the following IEEE vtools link https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/17679

It will be held 7 – 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 2013 at the Boston campus of Northeastern University, 458 Richards Hall on Krentzman Quad.

For more information, please contact Emily Anesta, eanesta@ieee.org, (781) 981-6731, or visit the IEEE website at http://www.ieeeboston.org/. Refreshments will be provided at the meeting.

The meeting will take place at the Boston campus of Northeastern University, 458 Richards Hall on Krentzman Quad (on Huntington Avenue). A campus map showing the building (marked with the numeral 42) is available at http://www.northeastern.edu/campusmap/map/qad5.html. Visitor directions via car and public transportation as well as parking information are available at http://www.northeastern.edu/campusmap/directions.html#AVG Parking is available at the Renaissance Garage at 835 Columbus Avenue, as well as metered parking on the streets around campus. The campus can be reached by public transportation on the Orange line (Ruggles stop) and Green E line (Northeastern University stop), as well as buses.

Communications Society and Women in Engineering

4:00 PM, Thursday, 4 April (Please check website for any change in start time)

Verizon Innovation Center Tour

With the deployment of their FiOS Fiber to the Home wired and 4G LTE wireless networks, Verizon has technology and operations pushing the state of the art in nearly all aspects of consumer electronics products and services. This meeting begins at 4pm with an agenda that includes a tour of The Verizon Innovation Center along with light refreshment and amble opportunities for networking.

The Verizon Innovation Center was created to explore the next frontiers of 4G LTE wireless connectivity, to quickly prototype and test products, to build those products, and exhibit them in a real world setting. With recognition that not everything will make it to market, The Innovation Center provides a facility for: dreaming new solutions, testing and exploring potential, letting key audiences help determine feasibility, and all the while continuously pushing the boundaries of wirelessly connecting everything. The Center is organized about several labs: Consumer, Enterprise, and Flex each provisioned with concept visualization demonstrations.

Venue Note. This is our venue at the new Verizon Technology Center Campus in Waltham.

The address is 50 Sylvan Road, Waltham, MA 02451. If you have recently attended previous ComSoc meetings on this Verizon campus, please note that this meeting is NOT in the same building as recent, previous ComSoc meeting locations.

Important Note: Verizon Technology Center requests the names of the meeting attendees in advance of the meeting. If you plan to attend, please send a note via e-mail with your name to John Nitzke at RF@ieee.org by Wednesday, April 3rd.

This will also reserve your place on the tour. Since this tour has limited capacity, reservations are on a first come first serve basis. A waitlist will be held to accommodate any cancelations. Last minute on-site registration at the door will not be possible for this tour.

Directions to Verizon Technology Center (old Verizon Labs location), 50 Sylvan Rd. campus, Waltham, MA 02451: Take Exit 27B on I95/128, heading west on Winter Street. Stay all the way to the right. Verizon Technology Center is 1/2 mile ahead. At the second traffic light, turn left onto WEST ST. and then take the first right (at the Verizon sign) which leads into the Verizon campus. The building and entrance for the meeting are on your left and parking is available in the front at 50 Sylvan Road, on your right.

Women in Engineering and Education Society

3:00 PM, Tuesday, 2 April

Revisiting the Colombia Space Shuttle Disaster 10 Years Later

Dr. James N. Hallock

Dr. James N. Hallock Photo Received BS (1963), MS (1969) and PhD (1972) degrees in Physics from MIT and authored or co-authored two patents and more than 225 publications. Joined the Apollo Optics Group of the MIT Instrumentation Lab (now the Draper Lab) from 1963 to 1966, and dealt with the selection of Earth landmarks for updating guidance computers on Apollo and determined the potential effects of solar flare radiation on Apollo's optical systems. From 1966 to 1970, I was a physicist at the NASA Electronics Research Center and did research in modern optics (holography and spatial filtering) and developed a spacecraft attitude determining system. In 1970 joined the DOT Transportation Systems Center (now the Volpe Center) and studied aircraft wake vortices, developed aviation safety systems, and conducted many detailed safety studies. Over the past ten years thirteen students from the Technical University of Delft (The Netherlands) completed their senior project, BS or MS thesis working on aircraft wake vortex topics under my direction. At the Volpe Center I was Manager of the Aviation Safety Division (1986-2006) and a senior scientist (2006 to retirement in 2008) and currently consult on aircraft wake turbulence. In 1973 cofounded a computer billing service for the medical professions and served as its president until 1989 when the company was sold. In 2003 I served as a member of the space shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board; spent six months in Houston investigating the accident and then four months near Washington, DC, writing the final report. I have served as an MIT Educational Counselor since 1977. Have been married 47 years to Georgie and have two married sons who in 2012 each brought into this world a grandson.

Meeting will be held at 161 College Avenue, Medford Ma, Halligan Hall room 111A. Parking: Tufts University Garage on Boston Avenue.