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EDISON AWARDS / Issue #13
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July 16, 2015
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20 Leagues Under the Sea
Edison Awards Nominee WHOI is getting deep in shallow waters
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, home of the famed Alvin crewed submersible, maintains its own fleet. WHOI gussied Alvin up with a slew of upgrades last year, but like the folks at Monterey Bay, its focus has been shifting toward AUVs. Its vision for the drone-y future is different than Monterey Bay's, though-Woods Hole researchers are focused on using drones in often dangerous shallow water expeditions, not so much sending them into the open ocean. "We started out saying, 'Look, we don't want to go to the deep ocean, which is where these other vehicles go,'" says Hanumant Singh, a roboticist at Woods Hole. "We want to work on things like archaeology. We want to work on things like fisheries, coral reef ecology. So shallower water." More
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Scratch the Surf(ace)
Edison Award Winner Liquid Robotics is going green with new research
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Buy Coastal
Move to deeper waters with new innovation from Edison Awards winner Oru Kayak
A company that brought you the world's first origami-inspired folding kayak is back again with a new model - the 16-foot Coast (and Coast+), which is a longer, expedition-style kayak designed for multi-day trips and choppier waters. The Coast offers some neat improvements over Oru's original 12-foot folding kayak, but retains the remarkably simple fold-out design that makes it easy to pack and carry, as well as fun to paddle. More
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Making Waves
Northwest Energy Innovations is harvesting wave power
For the first time ever, some Americans are turning on the lights with energy from the ocean's waves.
A pilot project in Hawaii is now grid-connected at a naval test site off the island of Oahu. The device, known as Azura, is being tested by the University of Hawaii.
"As the first grid connected wave energy device in the U.S. that will be tested and validated by an independent party, this deployment marks a major milestone for our team and the marine renewable energy industry," Northwest Energy Innovations founder and CEO Steve Kopf said in a statement.
The 45-ton Azura absorbs wave energy - from both up-and-down and side-to-side motion - and converts it to electricity. It is the first design of its kind - other projects haven't incorporated this 360-degree motion, according to the company. More
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Captain Planet
How Edison Awards speaker Jonathan Trent is fueling the energy conversation
Jonathan Trent works at NASA's nanotechnology department, where he builds microscopic devices out of proteins from extremophiles -- bacteria that live in the world's harshest environments. It isn't the logical place to start a biofuel project. But in 2008, after watching enzymes chomp through plant cells, Trent started thinking about biofuels. And, because he has a background in marine biology, he started thinking about algae and the oceans. More
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2015 Edison Awards Event Photos & Videos
Check out all the photos from the 2015 Edison Awards Meet the Innovators Forum & Awards Gala Here
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Steering Committee Spotlight
Simon Fung
Senior Product Development Specialist, 3M Corporation
Dr. Simon Fung is a new product developer at 3M Company where he is constantly seeking to discover unarticulated customer needs for the development of innovative 3M products. Simon himself is the lead product developer for the 3M Kind Removal Silicone Tape which is an Edison Award winner and he has commercialized a number of other new 3M products as well. He had served as the chair of 3M Tech Forum, an organization that works with the R&D top management to promote collaborations within the 3M technical community. Simon also participates in the 3M Visiting Wizards, a program that allows 3M scientists to go into local schools to share science by hands-on experiments and 3M's STEP (Science Training Encouragement Program) where local high school students come to 3M for training in science and engineering.
To learn more about Simon Fung, or any of the other Edison Awards Steering Committee members, click Here
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