Veena Vallem Wins First-Place in the Energy Pitch Competition

Graduate student Veenasri Vallem is the first-place winner of the NC State Energy Week “Energy Pitch” competition. Organized by the campus Energy Collaborative, Energy Week is designed to increase visibility of the university’s energy use, research, and opportunities to transition to a clean energy future.

The Collaborative is a loose collection of campus citizens whose common bond is any of their activities that focus on some aspect of energy. Members include faculty researchers (Prof. Fanxing Li is a member), extension agents, research centers and institutes such as the N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center and the FREEDM Systems Center, and NC State’s Energy Systems department.

The Energy Pitch competition was open to undergraduate and graduate students. Each participant’s 90-second YouTube video pitch highlighted their solutions to help reduce energy consumption and/or carbon emissions. The goals of the competition were to build on NC State’s culture of innovation and entrepreneurship while also exploring creative solutions.

In her pitch, “New approach for oceanic energy harvesting,” Veena describes a device she developed as a part of her Ph.D. research. A paper describing the work and the device hasn’t been published yet, so it’s not possible to provide details or a link to the video.

Veena, who received her B.S. in chemical engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, is a Ph.D. student in Prof. Michael Dickey’s research group. Her research interests include sustainable energy, soft stimuli-responsive materials, and sensors.

Veena was also the second-place winner in the Poster Session of the Fall ’20 Schoenborn Symposium for her poster, “Liquid metal for soft electronics.”

Congratulations Veena!