iSEE funds Professor Overbye’s research related to renewable energy and transportation
The Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE) awarded seed funding to Professor Thomas Overbye for his interdisciplinary project exploring renewable energy sources for transportation. The project entitled, “Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Systems for Synergized Utilization of Multiple Energy Sources toward Sustainable Vehicular Transportation,” will create a framework to expand and operate interdependent critical infrastructure systems (ICIs) using multiple renewable energy sources to fuel better regional and national transportation systems. He noted, “It will provide significant guidance to 1) policies for expanding renewable sources of energy and environmental conservation, 2) strategies for infrastructure design and management and for vehicle industry development, 3) information for community development, and 4) new curriculum for education and capacity building for the emerging ICIs science and engineering.”
The project is funded through iSEE’s second round of seed funding, which totals more than $1.2 million. iSEE is supporting four major interdisciplinary research projects at Illinois. Overbye will work with Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Professor Ximing Cai, who does interdisciplinary modeling of water-food-energy systems and infrastructure; Agricultural and Consumer Economics Professor Madhu Khanna, an expert in environmental and economic policy analysis; CEE Associate Professor Yanfeng Ouyang, who works with logistics systems and transportation networks; and CEE Assistant Professor Ashlynn Stillwell, a water-energy nexus scholar.