In Business PHX
With Moore’s Law being stretched to its maximum, research and innovation are turning to advanced packaging to make electronics more powerful and enhance the capabilities of the tiny devices that drive the technology-based products consumers enjoy and that national defense systems rely on.
Arizona State University is a key partner for the semiconductor packaging industry helping develop innovations that create more dynamic packaging opportunities. The university is one of a few in the country that teaches advanced packaging to its students, creating the skilled workforce that industry will need as it continues to grow and diversify.
“ASU’s competitive advantage in advanced packaging stems from our scale, the innovativeness of our faculty and our partnerships, which extend both locally with companies like Deca Technologies, NXP and others,” says Zachary Holman, a professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at ASU. “Advanced packaging will allow the semiconductor industry to keep growing, even though shrinking transistors is no longer the path forward. Here in Arizona we have an excellent advanced packaging industry, and it’s growing.”
Find more on this topic and learn about ASU’s projects and services here.
inBusiness PHX
“Solar for All Arizonans is a critical program that will lower energy costs for thousands of Arizonans,” said Governor Katie Hobbs. “In addition to directly providing Arizona families with clean, affordable electricity, Solar for All Arizonans will open new opportunities for our home grown solar industry, and create good-paying jobs in communities all across the state.”
The innovative Solar for All Arizonans program will provide numerous benefits for families throughout Arizona, including over $164 million in bill savings for participating families, freeing up household budgets for food, medicine, and other essential expenses. OOR will partner with electric utilities, especially Tribal utility authorities, to deploy neighborhood-scale solar and provide utility bill credits for thousands of Arizonans renting in multi-family housing. Additionally, over 300 rural households will benefit from solar plus battery systems for their homes, protecting them from electricity service disruption.
“The Governor’s Office of Resiliency is pleased to partner with financing institutions and community-based organizations to provide distributed solar and battery benefits to Arizonans in all parts of the state,” said OOR Director Maren Mahoney. “Energy access and affordability is critical in Arizona, especially during our long, hot summers. Arizona is a leader in clean energy generation, and this program will open new pathways for families previously unable to tap into the many benefits of our flourishing clean energy economy.”
The Office of Resiliency expects to begin the Solar for All Arizonans program by the end of 2024.
ASU News
The U.S. has work to do in the development of technologies that are going to help the country to reach the goal of being 100% carbon-pollution free by 2035, according to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. In moving toward this goal, the nation needs more people who have the knowledge to advance progress in this area.
“Clean energy systems are keywords used by federal agencies when talking about reducing or completely removing the traditional oil-based or fossil-fuel-based economy, which will happen by 2040,” says Arunachala Mada Kannan, a professor of engineering in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. “We need to do a lot of things before that comes to fruition, but the key aspect is the energy source. If you tackle that, everything will fall into place.”
Meeting this challenge is the reason why the new Master of Science in clean energy systems is launching this fall in The Polytechnic School, part of the Fulton Schools, with Kannan as the program chair.
In the U.S., most clean energy systems education comes in the form of concentrations of other degree programs. Kannan says that to his knowledge, this is the only graduate program dedicated to clean energy systems.
“A systems approach is required to create real solutions to these global energy opportunities,” says Kurt Paterson, director of The Polytechnic School. “From the first electron generated to the last inch of wiring, we need engineers who think across technologies, policy, economics and access.”
The interdisciplinary graduate program benefits students seeking to further their education in this high-demand field, particularly those who earn undergraduate degrees in chemical, mechanical, electrical and materials engineering disciplines. The program’s main focus is on the design, applications, operations and maintenance of solar photovoltaics, batteries, fuel cells and smart zero-emission vehicles enabled by cyber-resilient power electronics systems.
For students earning a bachelor’s degree at ASU, the program offers an accelerated master’s degree option that allows students to earn their master’s degree immediately following their undergraduate work in a shorter time period.
One of the advantages students will have in this program is that all the faculty members have their own state-of-the-art research labs.
“The faculty is at the forefront in solving current issues associated with the smarter materials or systems, and students are very excited to learn from them,” Kannan says.
This new degree follows the model of other programs in The Polytechnic School that provide engaged learning, systems perspectives, industry engagement and research that drives business and society.
“Our clean energy systems faculty, students and graduates will help Arizona develop a world-leading, sun-driven economy. The benefits are wide-ranging and substantial,” Paterson says.
One key focus of the program is the study of autonomous zero-emission vehicles. Phoenix is at the forefront of autonomous vehicle testing, and has been since 2015 when the Valley’s involvement in the development and testing of these vehicles began, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation.
“Phoenix is one of the few cities in the country that has almost all autonomous vehicle companies fully testing their vehicles,” Kannan says.
This provides many employment opportunities for graduate students to put their education to work.
Another advantage for students in the degree program is the chance to collaborate with other schools at ASU as well as industry partners. Local companies that may be interested in the same areas can give students experience working on battery or fuel cell systems to enable urban air mobility applications. This creates possibilities for internships that can lead to job opportunities. The Polytechnic School is actively seeking industry partners for these work-based integrated learning experiences.
Upon completion of this program, graduates will be prepared to work in many different settings, such as large corporations, government agencies and small businesses, as well as go on to pursue advanced degrees. With the emphasis on project-based, hands-on learning infused with the development of entrepreneurial mindsets, some graduates may even start companies of their own.
As governments and businesses around the world rapidly invest in clean energy, this degree program will prepare the next generation of engineers to influence this historic transformation, all while helping create a more stable environment, equitable access to energy and thriving economies.
Says Paterson, “Can you imagine a better way to make a career?”
KEO Marketing
We are proud to announce that KEO Marketing, representing eSkill Corporation, has been honored with the prestigious Netty Award for Best SEO Optimization. This recognition is a testament to the exceptional results our SEO program has delivered, boosting our leads by an impressive 32% despite the heightened competition in the digital landscape.
The Netty Awards, a beacon of excellence in the digital realm, have bestowed their coveted recognition upon KEO Marketing and eSkill Corporation. These awards, spanning over 100 categories, serve as a testament to the innovative spirit and technical prowess of the winners, setting a high standard for the industry.
Eric Friedman, the CEO of eSkill, expressed his pride at KEO Marketing’s accomplishment, stating, “We are thrilled that our marketing agency, KEO Marketing, has been acknowledged by the Netty Awards. This recognition is a validation of the tireless efforts and deep expertise our team has poured into our SEO initiatives over the past year, and the significant marketing and sales results we have achieved.”
Netty Awards recipients are selected based on several factors, including creativity, technical proficiency, innovation, and overall excellence in the respective field. KEO Marketing’s win on behalf of eSkill affirms the hard work, innovative thought, and dedication to the SEO program.
About eSkill Corporation
Founded in 2003, eSkill is a leading provider of employment assessment solutions that are accurate, thorough, and compliant predictors of employee success. eSkill is a global leader in the employment assessment industry and has expanded its core skills test offerings to include cognitive aptitude tests, video response questions, and behavioral assessments. Its solutions enable hiring and training managers to configure assessments from eSkill’s extensive Skills Test Library to match their hiring and training needs and reduce the risk of hiring failures and discrimination litigation. Select from over 800 standard job-based and subject-based tests, or easily customize relevant tests from thousands of subjects across a vast number of job functions. For more information, visit https://eSkill.com.
About KEO Marketing, Inc.
KEO Marketing is an award-winning B2B marketing agency that develops, launches, and manages marketing strategies. It acts as a partner and outsourced marketing department for dozens of companies with outstanding results.
KEO Marketing’s solutions include fractional CMO services, marketing strategy, brand and messaging, search engine marketing and optimization, social media, website development, digital advertising, and more. Some of the world’s most trusted brands have depended on KEO Marketing for marketing that delivers tangible and substantial results. For more information and to request a complimentary marketing audit, please visit https://www.keomarketing.com.
About The Netty Awards
Established to celebrate achievement in the digital age, the Netty Awards are one of the most trusted accolades in the industry. Recognizing excellence across over 100 unique categories, the awards honor top leaders and companies that demonstrate creativity, technical proficiency, innovation, and overall impact in their field.
KJZZ
The triple-digit heat in Phoenix makes it difficult to farm — everything from growing crops to tending livestock.
There is a solution that cools off the land while also providing sustainable energy — agrivoltaics. That’s a fancy term that means using large solar panels to provide shade. Of course, such a large undertaking requires a lot of funding that’s hard to come by.
One farm in the Valley adopted agrivoltaics nearly a year ago.
Maya’s Farm is an organic farm run by Maya Dailey. Dailey acquired the farm in 2006 and grew its space from one and one-quarter acres to the eight acres it measures today. The farm focuses on producing crops like carrots and arugula without the use of fertilizers. The farm also has livestock like chickens.
The food that is produced at Maya’s Farm is collected by Community Supported Agriculture, a system that works to combine the produce of a variety of small, local farms to be sold at farmer’s markets.
In 2022, Maya’s Farm became a conservation easement with the support of the City of Phoenix and the nonprofit Central Arizona Land Trust. A conservation easement is a piece of land set aside specifically for one purpose. This land’s purpose is to continue to provide Phoenix with space for sustainable agriculture.
Dailey talked about her commitment to the environment.
“It’s a commodity that we take advantage of it. We use it, use it, use it, use it and abuse it. And then we don’t do anything to give back to that,” said Dailey.
Dailey used diesel-powered generators For 17 years to cover her electric needs. Diesel generators typically can run from eight to 24 hours before needing to be refilled. Maya had to change her generators every six hours.
“I had three of them, and we would just change them in and out. Sometimes we’d leave one on all night. A lot, a lot of, and man hours, too,” she said.
Almost five years ago, the Arizona Sustainability Alliance, known as AZSA, came to Maya with a possible solution to her problem: agrivoltaics.
Agrivoltaics is the use of solar panels in agriculture. Agrivoltaics has been seen to solve both the problem of the lack of space for renewable energy and agriculture by combining them on the same plot of land, typically by installing panels either above or below crops.
Michele Caporali is an external affairs associate with the Nature Conservancy. She was the programs director and education programs manager of AZSA for a year and worked closely on the agrivoltaics project.
“It’s beneficial for the plants. Um, you know, those, you know, those mutualistic relationships that you can get between the plants and the solar panels is great. Um, those plants will cool the solar panels and they’re now able to run more efficiently and they provide some shade when everything around here is cooking at 120 degrees outside,” said Caporali.
The agrivoltaics project at Maya’s Farm went through countless changes throughout its five-year process. The project was funded through grant money and was a partnership with graduate students from the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Dailey said that there were many ideas thrown around by the students, but a few years into the project, AZSA and Dailey ran into issues with getting zoning permits from the city of Phoenix and the project stalled.
“The funders were going to pull the resources if we didn’t get the project done at a certain time. And, um, everybody was panicking. I was upset cause we’d worked so hard on it. We didn’t want to lose it,” said Dailey.
The project was finished just over a year ago and has so far benefitted both Maya’s wallet and the farm’s impact on the environment.
“It costs me $25 a month, uh, which is great. As opposed to 700 with the diesel, with the generators. I was running it on generators. So, we lessened our carbon footprint, we decreased our overhead, and we are able to then navigate an educational program with Arizona Sustainability Alliance,” said Dailey.
The limitation of this renewable power project comes down to the resource it depends on, the sun. In locations with frequent cloudy weather, collecting energy from the sun can be difficult. Additionally, some crops like basil or lavender, need direct sunlight to grow.
In urban spaces like Phoenix, it can take quite a while to get an agrivoltaics project started, especially when someone is trying to get a project like Maya’s Farm started through a city government that supports nearly 2 million people.
“If we want to shift … environmental change, agricultural change, the change for our health.” “I mean, we need our communities to pull together and our voices to stand strong together,” Dailey said.
Data about the agrivoltaics project on Maya’s farm is still being collected. Additionally, Dailey has decided to take a season off from growing to focus on getting sustainability into classrooms and to take more time for herself.
The University of Arizona News
University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory researchers will have a hand in two of the three instruments NASA selected for deployment on the lunar surface by Artemis III astronauts.
Once installed near the moon’s South Pole, the instruments will collect valuable scientific data about the lunar environment, the lunar interior and how to sustain a long-duration human presence on the moon, which will help prepare NASA to send astronauts to Mars.
The instruments were specifically chosen because of their unique installation requirements that necessitate deployment by humans during moonwalks, a NASA press release explained. All three payloads were selected for further development towards flight on Artemis III, which is targeted to launch in 2026. Final manifesting decisions about the mission will be determined at a later date. Members of these payload teams will become members of NASA’s Artemis III science team.
Artemis III, the first mission to return astronauts to the surface of the moon in more than 50 years, will explore the south polar region of the moon. Several proposed landing regions for the mission are located amid some of the oldest parts of the moon. Together with the permanently shadowed regions, they provide the opportunity to learn about the history of the moon through previously unstudied lunar materials.
Mapping moonquakes
Dani DellaGiustina, assistant professor of planetary sciences in the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, is working as part of the team to design and build two seismometers for the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station, or LEMS. One will be tuned to detect deep moonquakes and the other to detect shallow moonquakes.
“I am stoked because I have been working for years to develop seismic instruments not just for the moon, but also for asteroids and other bodies like Europa,” DellaGiustina said. “So, to see one of them make it to the next step, which is flight opportunity, is really exciting.”
LEMS is led by Mehdi Benna from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. NASA Goddard will build and operate LEMS. DellaGiustina is a co-investigator along with Hop Bailey, a UArizona Space Institute program manager, and Angela Marusiak, an assistant research professor of planetary sciences. Veronica Bray, associate research professor in planetary sciences, is assisting with science operations.
LEMS is a compact, autonomous seismometer suite designed to carry out continuous, long-term monitoring of ground motion from moonquakes, in the lunar south polar region. The instrument will characterize the regional structure of the moon’s crust and mantle, which will add valuable information to lunar formation and evolution models. LEMS is intended to operate on the lunar surface from three months up to two years and may become a key station in a future global lunar geophysical network.
Moonquakes have a few sources, including the same gravitational tug between the moon and Earth that causes ocean tides. Also, in the same way that houses creak as temperatures rise, the moon trembles as it expands and contracts in response to dramatic temperature swings.
“The big difference between the Earth and the moon is the moon does not have plate tectonics. There is some evidence of faults on the moon, however,” Marusiak said. “One of our goals is to figure out if those faults are active and how active they are, and if they could cause a risk for the astronauts or their habitats.”
Lastly, the researchers also anticipate that LEMS will detect meteor impacts.
Treasures beneath the surface
Erik Asphaug, professor of planetary sciences in the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, is a collaborator on the Lunar Dielectric Analyzer, or LDA, which will reveal what lies a meter deep in the moon’s regolith, which is airless soil.
“As a child of the Apollo era, I find it amazing to be part of this adventure to put an instrument on the moon,” Asphaug said. “I’ve always been a big fan of radio and radar techniques to find out what’s inside of things. I’m most excited to see if the regolith near the south pole has active frost.”
LDA will measure how the moon’s regolith responds to an electric field, which depends on porosity and the presence of volatiles – substances that evaporate – especially ice. It will gather essential information about the structure of the moon’s subsurface and monitor whether volatiles migrate as the LDA goes in and out of shadow.
Hideaki “Hirdy” Miyamoto – a University of Tokyo professor, Planetary Science Institute affiliated scientist and adjunct professor at the University of Adelaide – leads the LDA, which is supported by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
“Different materials propagate radio signals at different speeds,” Asphaug said, “so when you send a signal and measure its reflection, its speed tells you about composition and porosity. This will be important not only for lunar science, but for establishing a permanent human presence on the moon.”
With the Artemis campaign, NASA will land the first woman, first person of color and its first international partner astronaut on the moon, and establish long-term exploration for scientific discovery and preparation for human missions to Mars for the benefit of all.
“It is exciting to see a new generation of Lunar and Planetary Laboratory scientists build on our legacy of lunar exploration, dating back to even before Apollo,” said Mark Marley, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory director. “Our first major research program was to map the moon. Now we are helping send instruments to detect what lies beneath that surface.”