Comet Earns Department of Energy Fellowship

Bernadette Magalindan BS’21, a mechanical engineering doctoral student in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas, has been named a 2024 U.S. Department of Energy Innovation in Buildings (IBUILD) Graduate Research Fellow.

The fellowship provides support for Magalindan’s research, which focuses on reducing carbon emissions from buildings by improving their energy efficiency and sequestering carbon dioxide, which involves storing carbon dioxide to prevent it from being released into the atmosphere.

The fellowship, managed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, is designed to strengthen the pool of graduate student scholars who are equipped for research-intensive careers in fields supporting the decarbonization of buildings.

Magalindan is developing a material that uses salvaged wood to keep building temperatures comfortable without using energy, which then can reduce the load on heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. She optimized the composite’s optical properties to reflect sunlight and to eject heat. In addition, Magalindan included a material that can store and release heat.

“We designed the chip without lenses or optics so that it could fit into a mobile device. The pixels which create images by detecting signals reflected from a target object have the shape of a .5-mm square, about the size of a grain of sand,” said Dr. Wooyeol Choi, assistant professor at Seoul National University and the corresponding co-author of the latest paper.

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“The final product will be new roofing material that fends off heat in hot weather and provides warmth in the cold through its engineered optical- and thermal-energy storing properties,” she said.

Magalindan is a researcher in the lab of Dr. Shuang (Cynthia) Cui, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, who is working to develop a quick-drying polymeric desiccant that could dehumidify buildings using at least 30% less energy than conventional air-conditioning systems. Magalindan was an energy storage intern at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2024.

“I chose research as both a career and a climate action,” Magalindan said. “Achieving our collective goal of a clean energy transition requires leaps and bounds of effort and dedication. I am grateful for programs like IBUILD that so strongly advocate the next generation of scientists taking on this crucial issue. The knowledge and skills I’ve gained so far during my PhD program in addition to the support by the IBUILD Fellowship are immensely empowering.”

A version of this article appeared in News Center.