Engineering Ph.D. Student Takes Third Prize in NSF Competition with ASPIRE Research

Last month, College of Engineering Ph.D. candidate Marium Rasheed took home third prize at the Nation Science Foundation’s Perfect Pitch Competition with her work on battery management and storage systems.

The competition, held every two years at the NSF Engineering Research Center meeting, gives students the opportunity to present their research and findings over 90 seconds. Rasheed’s pitch, titled ‘Composite Hybrid Energy Storage System to Accelerate the Adoption of Electric Vehicles,’ was the first time ASPIRE — Utah State’s electric transportation research center — competed at the national level since its launch in 2020.

Rasheed was among 14 finalists and was the only student from a generation four Engineering Research Center to be in the top three. All ERCs founded after 2020 are considered generation four and focus on research through inclusive partnerships and workforce development.

“I am ecstatic to have won this prestigious award and am grateful to my advisor, Dr. Regan Zane, for giving me the opportunity to represent ASPIRE at the national level,” Rasheed said. “I am also thankful to the team at ASPIRE for their feedback. This competition honed my presentation skills and allowed me to convey the value proposition of my research work effectively.”

Regan Zane is the ASPIRE Center Director and a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at USU. His work, and much of Rasheed’s focus, is on bringing affordable electric vehicles to the market by reducing the size and improving the performance of batteries.

The composite hybrid energy storage system, which Rasheed calls CHESS , is a multi-chemistry battery architecture that optimally combines power-dense and energy-dense battery cells. CHESS could save the United States $550 billion annually and lower carbon emissions.

“This novel technology can be combined with ASPIRE’s upcoming charging infrastructure to deliver an electric vehicle’s desired power and energy at a much lower cost,” she added.

Rasheed will be presenting her work and delivering her pitch again during ASPIRE’s annual Engineering Research Center conference.

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Writer: Sydney Dahle, 435-797-7512, sydney.dahle@usu.edu

Contact: Marium Rasheed, marium.rasheed@usu.edu