It’s a distinction reserved for people whose ideas don’t just live in labs and journals—they turn into technologies that reshape industries, improve lives, and spark economic growth. Yi’s career does exactly that.

Yi joins a cohort of only 2,253 Fellows worldwide, representing more than 300 prestigious universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes.

His research spans intelligent electronics, devices that power artificial intelligence, and next-generation optoelectronic technologies designed to make energy systems smarter and more efficient.

During his career, Yi has secured 34 issued patents, including 18 in the U.S. Many of these inventions have been licensed by major international energy companies, generating more than $300 million in revenue. He is also a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.

Nominators say Yi’s inventions have the potential to transform multiple fields. Among them:

• Ultrasensitive sensors capable of detecting particles as tiny as those found in air pollution—opening the door to better environmental monitoring and AI-powered sensing.
• Advanced optoelectronic crystals that make it possible to build thinner, more efficient solar panels and other renewable energy technologies.
• Super-thin, light-controlling lenses, recognized by MIT Technology Review as a breakthrough technology with major implications for the future of semiconductor manufacturing.
• Chip-scale LiDAR systems now being tested at Mcity, the world’s first proving ground for connected and autonomous vehicles. This kind of LiDAR system features ultra-compact, Light Detection and Ranging sensors that put all data onto single silicon chips, making them much smaller, cheaper, more robust and perfect for consumer electronics.

Yi joins three other faculty members in the college who were previously named NAI fellows: Brian Armstrong, professor, mechanical engineering (also named a Senior Member of NAI in 2019); Pradeep Rohatgi, professor, materials science & engineering; and Junhong Chen (now Crown Family Professor of Molecular Engineering in the University of Chicago).

He will formally be inducted at the 15th annual NAI conference, which will take place in June in Los Angeles.

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The coating they developed with Yuting Spiegelhoff, a doctoral student in electrical engineering, is easier to use and cheaper than materials used in traditional solar panels.

The discovery came about by accident.

The research team was originally testing hopeite, a zinc-based mineral used for corrosion protection, when they found it had a photovoltaic effect—producing electricity from light, especially when a particular plant dye was used.

“We didn’t know that the zinc-phosphate would have this photovoltaic effect,” Kouklin said.  

The researchers found that layers of hopeite reacts quickly to changing light conditions. Unlike traditional solar cells, it doesn’t require semiconductors or an external power source.

That simplicity matters. Traditional solar cells need semiconductors to convert sunlight into an electrical current. Manufacturing those semiconductors is costly, resource-intensive, and requires ultra-pure water.

The team has filed for a patent through the .

The effect of blackberry juice

The coating’s effect is amplified when the coating is combined with anthocyanin, a natural dye found in blackberries. The pigment alters how the mineral interacts with light, boosting voltage output.

“This opens the door to affordable and widely deployable solar cells,” Kouklin said. “Just think – embedded energy generation on metal roofs, infrastructure, or industrial surfaces.”

The Research Foundation helped kickstart this project with early-stage funding that allowed the team to demonstrate key properties and build a prototype. See the publication in .

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The story, which ran as the cover of the online magazine, elaborated on an academic paper Amano’s research team recently published in the ASME .

The technology already is being tested at multiple sites across Milwaukee. Other lab members involved in the work were PhD students Kada Kada and Abdallah Benelmadjat.

The study looked at the thermochemical properties of horse manure – and suggests that biowaste can provide an efficient means of energy generation in oxygen-free environments.

Researchers tested mixing sewage sludge with cow or chicken manure to see if it could produce more energy when heated. Then they used experimental and mathematical modeling and found that the right mix matters: about 30% sludge with 70% cow manure more than doubled the energy output.

The ASME is the second-largest professional organization in the field, subscribed to by 85,000 members in 135 countries.

Members can read the magazine story here.

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This award recognizes outstanding early-career professionals in the field of turbomachinery who have demonstrated excellence in research and are actively contributing to advancements in energy systems. Only 20 engineers worldwide were selected for the 2025 cohort.

Al Hamad, who also is assistant director at the U.S. DOE , presented his work on how new blade shapes work together with the air to make small wind turbines more efficient. By designing better blade shapes and understanding how air interacts with them, engineers can make wind turbines that produce more power, even at small sizes.

The TEECE Award supports recipients by providing registration and travel to the ASME Turbo Expo conference recently held in Memphis, Tenn. The award is open to engineers who are within five years of earning their most recent degree in a turbomachinery-related discipline.

Three 51ÁÔĆć doctoral students also presented at the same conference, Kada Kada, Areej Khalil, and Md Tarif Raihan. All are advised by Ryo Amano, Kulwicki Fellow Professor.

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Traditional disposal of these batteries requires special handling which is costly. So is recovering material from LFP batteries which offer little value beyond lithium.

Professor Deyang Qu, mechanical engineering, has developed a strategy to transform a looming EV waste crisis into an environmental and economic opportunity: Turn retired LFP batteries into something the U.S. desperately needs – domestically produced fertilizer that removes reliance on foreign imports.

Using a well-established ion-exchange process, Qu and his team were the first to recover lithium from the LFP materials by replacing it with potassium. The remaining elements include phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen, which are key ingredients in fertilizer.

“Right now, it costs more to recycle the batteries than the value of what we recover,” Qu said. “But if we can turn those elements into fertilizer, we not only reduce waste but also support agriculture in Wisconsin and beyond.”

The proof of concept has been demonstrated with funding from a 51ÁÔĆć internal Discovery and Innovation Grant and research partner, the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.

Why fertilizer?

“There are only two options to deal with this kind of waste,” said Qu, a global leader in energy storage research. “Either the manufacturers or the government will have to pay to dispose of the waste. That’s what inspired us to look for an economically sustainable way.”

Fertilizers are a high-value product essential for increasing crop yields and maintaining food security.

Most of the mineral deposits needed to make fertilizers currently are imported, he said. Recycling these batteries would create a ready domestic supply of those ingredients. And the fertilizer could be produced with less energy because the raw materials don’t have to be mined or transported.

Taking the next step

The next steps are to manufacture the fertilizer at a larger scale in order to conduct comparative field tests against conventional fertilizers.

“Once we obtain support for the recycling-separation portion of the project,” Qu said, “We will continue collaborating with the USDA to produce enough material for a one-acre tomato crop trial. Those results will help us market this idea to major fertilizer companies.”

Wisconsin is well-positioned to lead this innovative, self-sustaining battery recycling effort, leveraging its strong manufacturing and agricultural base. The project promises to create high-tech jobs and provide workforce training in emerging green technologies.

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Doctoral student Sadeed Hossain, electrical engineering, has been instrumental in this effort, helping to build and operate the test facility, called a “synthetic test circuit.” It is designed for evaluating next-generation circuit breakers in both high-current and high-voltage environments.

Traditional circuit breakers at substations rely on sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆) as an insulating medium needed to interrupt the flow of electrical current and protect infrastructure when something on the grid goes wrong.

However, SF₆ is an expensive and potent greenhouse gas that has toxic byproducts. As the grid ages, leakage has become a problem because, once in the atmosphere, SF₆ lingers for literally thousands of years.

An alternative insulator

Georgia Institute of Technology developed a different kind of circuit breaker that uses supercritical CO₂, as a viable replacement for SF₆, created by putting CO₂ under very high pressures and moderate temperature, supercritical CO₂ is a substance that’s somewhere between a gas and a liquid.

Lukas Graber, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, collaborated with former 51ÁÔĆć faculty member Chanyeop Park, to bring the testing part of the grant to 51ÁÔĆć. Hossain has kept the project on schedule, culminating in the completion of tests in November.

The new circuit breaker is designed to interrupt extremely high fault currents – up to 20,000 amperes (peak) – and is rated for operation at 72,000 volts, roughly the levels used to power large-scale facilities, such as major league baseball stadiums.

“Our industrial lab is the only university-based synthetic test circuit in U.S.,” Hossain said. “We built it to accommodate testing of supercritical CO₂, but it can be used to test any kind of high-voltage circuit breakers.”

“Now that the basic science has been completed through this partnership, Midwest companies can take advantage of this facility and work with us to design and test new high-voltage circuit breakers.”
-Andrew Graettinger, CEAS associate dean

“Now that the basic science has been completed through this partnership, Midwest companies can take advantage of this facility and work with us to design and test new high-voltage circuit breakers,” said Andrew Graettinger, associate dean for research in 51ÁÔĆć’s College of Engineering & Applied Science. “It’s a great example of academic collaboration opening doors to support the economy.”

As an undergraduate research assistant, recent graduate Samuel Catania (’25 BS, Electrical Engineering) developed a remote “command center” that allows high-voltage testing to be conducted safely from a separate control area outside the testing zone. To enhance electrical isolation and safety, the system is connected using fiber optic cables instead of traditional copper wiring.

The work behind this new circuit breaker and testbed was funded by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

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Silicon has long been recognized as a promising alternative to graphite, the conventional material used in li-ion battery anodes. It offers significantly higher energy density, packing more energy into a small size and leading to a longer life – an advantage especially important for high-demand applications like electric vehicles.

However, silicon also presents a major challenge: It expands dramatically during charging, leading to mechanical stress and a decline in performance over time.

To address this, Niu’s research will explore a new approach that uses micro-sized silicon particles – sourced from milled scrap silicon rather than costly nanoparticles. These micro-particles will be combined with a conductive polymer to form a composite anode material, replacing the graphite.

The goal is to improve durability by managing the volume changes that typically degrade silicon-based anodes, while managing costs.

The project will evaluate how these silicon micro-particles perform compared to traditional solutions and determine whether this composite material offers superior performance over silicon nanoparticles.

Proposals for the IGNITE Grant were reviewed by experts from private industry, academia, and the UW Office of Academic Affairs. Evaluation criteria included technical merit, the likelihood of successful completion, and the potential for economic impact in Wisconsin.

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“The results surpassed our expectations,” Niu said. “Our coating offers a dual benefit –better performance and better safety.”

Niu’s research focuses on lithium-metal (LM) batteries, a newer type of lithium-based battery that replaces graphite electrodes with solid lithium. LM batteries can hold significantly more energy than traditional lithium-ion batteries, making them attractive for high-demand needs, such as electric vehicles or energy storage for the grid, Niu said.

“With the current li-ion batteries, you can drive, let’s say, 300 miles on a charge,” he said. “With a LM battery, you can double the energy density – maybe 500 to 600 miles. That’s even better than a gas-powered vehicle!”

But there’s a catch: LM batteries are notoriously unstable. The problem stems from dendrites –needle-like structures of lithium that form during charging. Dendrites can pierce the battery’s electrolyte, causing short circuits and even fires.

To address this, Niu’s team developed a spray-on coating that combines MXene compounds –known for high electrical conductivity – with a large-molecule polymer that stabilizes the battery surface. The polymer helps prevent dendrite formation, while the MXene improves charge transport.

The innovation targets a key challenge that has stalled commercial rollout of lithium-metal batteries, despite their promise and the considerable industry investment.

The research was completed with a grant from the National Science Foundation. 

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Wastewater treatment, an operation that exists in every community, is an energy-intensive process, he said. But because there’s also widespread inefficiency, he saw an opportunity to create a single platform that could produce more than one resource while also contributing to energy sustainability.

He based the work on creating “green” hydrogen.

Hydrogen isn’t naturally available as a fuel. It must be produced, using water and electricity in a process called electrolysis which splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. For hydrogen production to be green however, the electricity used would have to come from a renewable source, driving up the cost. The highly flammable gas is also difficult to store and transport.

Solving these obstacles could pay off handsomely. Once produced, hydrogen is three times more efficient than fossil fuels and burning it gives off only water vapor.

Closed-loop system could offset electricity purchased from the grid

Alnawafah, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, proposes using gray water at treatment plants and electricity from solar cells to produce green hydrogen on site. He then uses the two resulting elements – hydrogen and oxygen – in a “closed loop” where the hydrogen heats the plant and oxygen improves the efficiency of the water treatment. Nothing goes to waste.

“Wastewater treatment plants take in gray water – why not instead use that in electrolysis?” Alnawafah said.

By optimizing the processes, he believes his closed-loop system could mean that treatment plants could make and use green hydrogen to offset much of the electricity they currently buy from the grid.

“Our technology can be used in many different processes to arrive at several outcomes,” said Ryo Amano, professor of mechanical engineering and Alnawafah’s advisor. “It provides extra power and additional energy sources for utility operations.” It’s the only research into green hydrogen at 51ÁÔĆć that he’s aware of, Amano said.

“A few employees from local companies came to see the lab because there isn’t anywhere else where the system concept can be displayed in a real environment,” he said. “In addition, Hamza has successfully demonstrated a 15% increase in energy efficiency at one Wisconsin wastewater treatment facilities.”

More avenues for optimizing

The researchers said their technology aims to make hydrogen a viable secondary source of energy at certain locations. The key to adopting green hydrogen, is controlling costs by optimizing its production.

Warmer water temperature in electrolysis and boosting the pressure of the hydrogen produced make a difference in the amount of hydrogen that can be produced, Alnawafah found. In fact, it’s the pressure and the flow rate that determines how much hydrogen you produce with a set amount of energy.

A unique aspect of the work is the researchers’ recognition that oxygen is not simply a by-product, but a valuable resource. Oxygen is pumped into the plant’s aeration tanks – the tanks that combine water and oxygen to accelerate the breakdown of organic material that is then removed from wastewater.

Air is currently used for this, but air contains only 21% oxygen. Alnawafah’s system would collect and immediately use 100% oxygen. He is now testing a hypothesis that pure oxygen will decrease the amount of time that the oxygen takes to accomplish its task.

The researchers cite hospital complexes, which also use oxygen as a raw material, as another example of how the technology could be used.

“With this project, we are showing how it could be done,” he said. “It won’t be as cheap as using natural gas, which creates carbon emissions, but by building in efficiencies for certain large-capacity needs, we give it a place in the overall energy equation.”

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With a rise in extreme weather, an ever-growing demand for energy, and an aging electrical grid, how can the U.S. fix its infrastructure and boost reliability without starting from scratch?

The answer, said Cuzner, is microgrid technology. Microgrids are power sources for a limited area, such as a military base. They integrate different kinds of energy, such as diesel generators, solar cells, wind turbines, fuel cells and battery banks to supply the necessary electricity storage, whether connected to the main grid or operating as an “island,” serving as backup power for the immediate vicinity it serves.

Cuzner views microgrids as a way to transform the old grid into an automated modern system. Microgrid components “talk” to each other, making them much quicker at detecting defects before they lead to a blackout.

However, because microgrids are smart, they are complex, making them expensive to operate. Cuzner has pioneered an idea that would clear the way to for microgrids to thrive commercially. He proposes breaking them down into “building blocks,” or smaller units of microgrid components, called nanogrids.

The background on microgrids

One reason microgrids aren’t widely used yet involves equipment compatibility, Cuzner said.

“You’re trying to merge the old infrastructure with the new equipment of the microgrid, where no uniform standards exist,” Cuzner said.

Finding the equipment needed to integrate renewables is one example, said Mark Vygoder, a doctoral student and longtime lab member. Cuzner’s lab members have been working with large U.S. military bases in Europe that already use microgrids to address grid insecurity but are grappling with costs related to knitting together unstandardized equipment.

“It’s a bit like the Wild West where you can buy devices from different vendors and all the products are a little bit different,” Vygoder said. “So, it becomes quite costly when you have to hire a service provider to sort that out for you. When the microgrid operates independent of the grid, all those different components need to coordinate and communicate.”

51ÁÔĆć expertise in power distribution

Cuzner, an expert in power controls, conversion and distribution – the areas of vulnerability in microgrid technology – stands at the center of 51ÁÔĆć’s reputation as a leader in both energy storage and electric grid technology.

Cuzner’s lab is a lead partner in the GRid-connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems (GRAPES), a national industry/university research center that aims to accelerate insertion of power electronics into the national grid.

Cuzner, Vygoder and Andrew Eggebeen, a recent PhD graduate in computer engineering, who worked in Cuzner’s lab, visited three U.S. bases in Europe in the summer of 2023 to get a first-hand look at how these microgrids are being implemented and their limitations.

“One thing we found was that these bases are very large and spread out, leading to transmission problems,” Cuzner said. “In one case, the solar array is several miles outside of the base.”

To solve the problem, Cuzner and his colleagues at the Naval Post Graduate School in California developed a “zonal distribution concept” – essentially breaking microgrids down into less complex units, called nanogrids.

What is a nanogrid?

Cuzner’s background is in the conversion of Navy shipboard power generation to electrical distribution. Such architecture features damage-control zones: When the power goes out in one part of the ship, the system reroutes itself using smart switchgear and continues to operate with only the affected zone shut down.

Nanogrids can be strung together within the microgrid itself, improving overall smart capabilities. And they can be added one at a time, easing the cost burden of a microgrid.

Cuzner and his team are researching the best ways to standardize components supplied by commercial vendors and ensure “grid-edge inter-compatibility,” which means that even components supplied by different vendors can work and play well together.

“If smart components of a nanogrid are standardized,” Cuzner said, “it can become a ‘plug and play’ building block that can be produced cost-efficiently.”

51ÁÔĆć’s microgrid ‘sandbox’

To work out the details of nanogrids, Cuzner’s lab members have built a fully functional microgrid at the University Services & Research building near 51ÁÔĆć’s Kenwood campus. Since 2021, the lab has been building an energy distribution system with smart metering and controls, giving them an experimental sandbox.

The researchers can now observe how a microgrid responds under varying conditions, quantify how commercial components monitor microgrid data, and then simulate in real-time a full-scale system that interacts with real control hardware.

“With our microgrid, we can simulate equipment that is on the grid, test it at scale, quantify the ‘grid-edge’ where everything comes together, and figure out how to improve performance,” Cuzner said. “That’s something no one else has done yet.”

In 2023, they worked with a local company, Badger Technologies, to install, test and integrate a battery energy storage system with the 51ÁÔĆć microgrid. In addition, 51ÁÔĆć’s microgrid includes a solar array, one wind turbine, two natural gas generators and a smart switch that could connect it to the national grid.

The college is currently exploring ways to secure federal funding to turn the 51ÁÔĆć microgrid into an industry-collaborative lab with a 1,000-13,000-volt testing facility. Such a facility would attract industry, quicken the pace of new microgrid technology and would include research on electric ships and aircraft.

Power distribution and controls in focus

Nanogrids also improve control of the flow of electricity if connected to the grid.

Control refers to how the existing grid meets demand. Higher than normal demand for electricity could cause a blackout, but so could a glut of power to the grid from renewables.

Another benefit of nanogrids is that the controls can be built from the “bottom up,” Vygoder said, giving nanogrids the ability to speedily compensate for power disturbances.

Southeast Wisconsin is the perfect place to develop this commercial potential with its cluster of companies related to energy, power and controls. 51ÁÔĆć is at the epicenter, with longstanding research partnerships with industry leaders including Eaton, Rockwell Automation, Leonardo DRS, and Johnson Controls.

So far, the U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center (NAVFAC EXWC) has funded Cuzner’s collaboration with the Naval Post Graduate School.

Most recently, this led to Cuzner receiving funding from Office of Naval Research to develop a “digital twin” approach to study how nanogrid components respond to a wide range of both normal and damaged scenarios.

AI and nanogrid decision-making

Digital twins rely on artificial intelligence to improve communication among the smart components of both micro and nanogrids. It’s the next step in the integration research.

When paired with machine learning, AI could potentially allow microgrids and nanogrids to teach themselves what leads to a breakdown and autonomously decide what to do when they detect trouble brewing.

For this research, Cuzner has consulted with Zhen Zeng, 51ÁÔĆć assistant professor of computer science, who is an expert in digital twins and cybersecurity. Zeng is co-advising computer engineering students who are helping in Cuzner’s lab, bringing together power/energy and computer engineering in the college.

“When we feed a lot of information into an AI model, the model can quickly tell you what is going on in the system,” said Zeng. “We try to understand which situations we would need to consider when building cyber-protection into the design,” she said.

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