South Carolina southern and coastal location has made it a U.S. leader in solar, wind and water innovation. The Clemson University Restoration Institute (CURI) has partnered with the private sector to develop a wind testing facility using a unique industrial coastal environment. CURI’s location in the coastal city of Charleston provides a natural world class deep-water port with worldwide access. The goal is to help manufacturers create better designs, lowering the cost of wind turbines and ultimately lowering energy costs. By testing turbines and simulating power grid responses under one roof, companies can do in months what formerly took years.

Clemson researchers imagined a talking river that could convey its condition to managers. They created a battery-operated computer smaller than a Rubik's Cube called a MoteStack, which allows an unprecedented number of sensors to be deployed across a large area and operate as a highly efficient network.

Advanced materials research at the University of South Carolina is based on a diverse portfolio of scientific work addressing issues in such areas as catalysis, sensors and energy-related fields (lighting, fuel cells) as well as technique-driven work in electron microscopy and high-performance computing.

Participants:
Gene Eidson, Director, Institute of Computational Ecology, Clemson University
Nick Rigas, Associate Director, Senior Scientist, Clemson University
Tom Vogt, Director of the NanoCenter, University of South Carolina
Kevin Weir, Innovation Leader, Milliken and Company
Moderator: Russ Keller, Vice President, SCRA