Featured CSE Publications

Off-Grid Electrical Systems in Developing Countries by Henry Louie, PhD

From mini-grids and energy kiosks to solar home systems and solar lanterns, Off-Grid Electrical Systems in Developing Countries by Electrical Engineering Professor Henry Louie provides students and engineers with a comprehensive guide to off-grid electrification. The chapters integrate technical aspects of off-grid systems with lessons learned from industry practitioners, always taking a pragmatic, data-driven approach.

“As the off-grid electrification industry grows, universities are starting and expanding courses and programs in humanitarian engineering and appropriate technology,” says Louie. “However, there is no textbook that serves this growing market. This book fills that gap by providing a technical foundation of off-grid electrical systems, putting into context the technical aspects for developing countries and discussing best practices by utilizing real-world data.”

The book covers a variety of off-grid systems and technologies including solar, wind, hydro, generator sets, biomass systems, battery storage and converters. Off-Grid is for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses related to electrical and energy engineering, humanitarian engineering and appropriate technology.

“Students want to learn how their discipline can positively impact others,” says Louie. “This book is a way to emphasize to engineering students how what they learn in the classroom can truly transform lives.”

Navigating the Math Major: Charting Your Course by Allison Henrich, PhD, and co-authors

A comprehensive guide for students interested in studying college-level math, Navigating the Math Major: Charting Your Course gives readers a feel for what they are likely to learn in different undergraduate math courses and provides information on research experiences, internships, jobs and more. Mathematics Professor Allison Henrich and her co-authors, Carrie Diaz Eaton (Bates College), Steven Klee (Amazon Web Services) and Jennifer Townsend (Microsoft) discuss failure and growth, while inviting students to join communities of support and giving them tools to develop skills that will help them make the most of their mathematical studies.

Henrich says that Navigating the Math Major “is something people are looking for now more than ever.”

“We wrote this book because we realized that there is so much information that could benefit students, set them up for success, that they only had tenuous access to,” says Henrich. “There are books, websites and blogs that contain small pieces of the puzzle, but the math community was asking for one that gathered together all of these resources in one place.”

Excerpt above originally appeared in the article, Good Books to Break the Dreary Days of Winter, by Lincoln Vander Veen.

Other Recent Publications

• Dr. Dylan Helliwell, Professor of Mathematics, and SU alumni, Alexander Habib, ’24, co-authored a paper titled Cassini Sets in Taxicab Geometry, published in the Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics. Their research, conducted from Spring 2023 through Winter 2024, explores the geometric properties of Cassini sets under the taxicab metric. The paper provides detailed analysis of these sets and their relationship to intersections and unions of restricted families, drawing connections with recent work on taxicab Apollonian sets. Habib is now pursuing graduate studies in mathematics at The Ohio State University. Read the article.
• Dr. Allison Henrich, in addition to her featured book, co-authored two research papers examining knotting traditions and their cultural significance:
  • A Global Cross-Cultural Analysis of String Figures Reveals Evidence of Deep Transmission and Innovation was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Read the abstract.
  • The Ties That Bind: Computational, Cross-Cultural Analyses of Knots Reveal Their Cultural Evolutionary History and Significance was published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Read the abstract.
• Dr. Mark Jordan, Professor of Biology, contributed to When the Wild Things Are: Defining Mammalian Diel Activity and Plasticity, published in Science Advances. Co-authored by over 200 researchers, including collaborators at Woodland Park Zoo, the study draws on data from over 8.9 million mammalian observations across 38 countries. The findings challenge conventional classifications of animal activity patterns, revealing that many species exhibit greater diel plasticity—changing their activity based on human influence, body size, and geographic range. Read the paper.
• Dr. Mehmet Vurkaç, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, authored Fluidity Across Genres is Possible, published in Spark, the online magazine of the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. The article explores how genre labels in music constrain artistic expression, especially for Black artists, and reflects on the racialized history of American music. Read the full article.
• Dr. Chris Whidbey, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, published The Tight Tool for the Job: Chemical Biology and Microbiome Science in Cell Chemical Biology. The article is a primer on chemical biology and microbiome science and is part of the journal’s special Microbiome collection. View the abstract.