Matthew Mench, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Awarded NSF Career Award

Dr. Matthew Mench, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the Director of Fuel Cell Dynamics and Diagnostics Laboratory has been awarded the NSF Career Award. His proposal, entitled “CAREER:  Sensors for Quantification of Degradation in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells”, was funded for $400,000 with the research taking place over the next five years.

Dr. Mench’s research project “Sensors for Quantification of Degradation in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells” will develop a new class of advanced degradation sensors for polymer electrolyte fuel cells.  Many complex systems, including fuel cells, suffer gradual degradation that can result in catastrophic failure.  Because the time scale of degradation is relatively slow, these types of anomalous faults are nearly impossible to detect at an early stage with conventional sensing technology.  A novel approach will be used to enable early detection and quantification of potentially catastrophic evolving faults in polymer electrolyte fuel cells. The methodology to achieve this sensing capability is heuristically similar to an electrocardiogram, in which the time series data of a patient’s heart response to external stress is used to rapidly diagnose ailments that have evolved over many years. The sensors developed will enable nearly imperceptible slow time scale anomalies to be directly quantified in a rapid time scale, well before significant degradation occurs, greatly extending service availability, performance, and enabling a more aggressive initial design.

The NSF Career Awards are highly selective grants to new faculty members that are believed to become the academic leaders of the future. Career awardees are selected on the basis of creative career development plans that effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their institution and build the foundation for a lifetime of contributions to their discipline.