Three UAE students to present papers in US

dubai — Three students from Al Ghurair University in Dubai will be submitting a paper that explores the performance of human energy harvesting technology during the IEEE Green Energy and Smart Systems Conference 2017 in California, USA this month.

Electrical and electronics engineering students Siham Ibrahim, Shaima Mustafa, and Alaa Halawani will be sponsored by their university to attend the summit.

Their work discusses a proposed power harvesting approach based on applying piezoelectric tiles on the university ground and combining it with a wireless power transfer technique to generate energy derived from student foot traffic throughout the campus. The embedded piezoelectric material converts the kinetic energy exerted by the students’ movement into electricity, which is then transmitted wirelessly and safely to power various facilities within the university.

The practical applications of the technology can serve a myriad of purposes to generate zerocarbon energy, and can be used in highly populated locations with high traffic like the Expo 2020 venue, schools, shopping centres and airports across the world.

Al Ghurair University president Prof Basem Alzahabi said: “We are proud of the tremendous amount of work that our students have undertaken to explore such a technology with great practical potential to the university and the UAE. This is the kind of innovative environment that we foster for our students in Al Ghurair University.”