UMD prominently showcased at ARPA-E summit

The 2025 (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) ARPA-E Summit at the National Harbor highlighted energy advances in basic science, innovation and commercialization. Initiated in 2009 with $400 million appropriated by Congress to “identify the most urgent challenges the U.S. faces in maintaining leadership in key areas of science and technology”, ARPA-E funds a diverse set of programs that empower researchers with funding, technical assistance, and market readiness.

The highlight of the summit is the Technology Showcase which features top researchers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and engineers demonstrating their latest advancement in energy technologies. This year, the University of Maryland (UMD) hosted 16 technology booths, and participated in 3 of the 8 technology demonstrations (hand selected by the ARPA-E program committee).

Flexnode, with UMD partners Michael Ohadi and Peter Sandborn, both UMD professors of mechanical engineering, outlined the problematic imbalance between mushrooming demand and lagging supply of data centers designed and built to meet the requirements of the latest iteration of AI clusters. Flexnode's Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) approach, tailored to quickly customize and deploy bespoke infrastructure, highlighted its combination of versatility, efficiency, sustainability and adaptability to the demands of future generations of chips, applicable to both central data centers and those on the network edge. Flexnode is one of four ARPA-E COOLERCHIPS awards received by UMD.

Dr. JC Zhao, former chair of the UMD Material Sciences and Engineering (MSE) department. demonstrated his ULTIMATE ARPA-E project focusing on next generation coatings for gas turbines and jet engines. The project's primary focus addresses the growing demand for more efficient gas turbines, necessitating the development of advanced environmental-thermal barrier coatings (ETBCs) for refractory alloys used in challenging environments. The team implemented an innovative strategy integrating coating design, synthesis, and evaluation through ultrafast high-temperature sintering (UHS). This accelerated iteration strategy proved remarkably cost-effective, offering rapid screening, lower capital costs, and significantly higher throughput than conventional methods. Ultimately, the project's outcomes pave the way for 1700°C-capable coatings, exceeding performance metrics and illuminating a path for rapid synthesis applicable to a wide array of applications.

WH-Power, a UMD start-up that developed out of the labs of Dr. Chunsheng Wang and Dr. Liangbing Hu, with awards from both the EVs4ALL (Electric Vehicles for American Low-carbon Living) and PROPEL-1K (Pioneering Railroad, Oceanic and Plane ELectrification with 1K energy storage systems) programs, demonstrated their rechargeable battery technology with five times the performance of lithium-ion, incorporating innovative chemistry, natural cellulose, and other abundant. This patented technology will enhance the nation’s energy portfolio, with solutions for security, grid stability, peak load shaving, backup power, and mobility while optimizing existing and future power generating facilities. Ultimately it can enhance grid resilience and national security by improving flexibility and reducing infrastructure dependency with world class energy storage solutions.

Among the several other UMD award booths, SCALEUP (Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential) awards to Ion Storage Systems (ION) and InventWood were on display as well.

ION is commercializing next-generation, high power-density, solid-state lithium metal batteries, based on ceramic electrolyte manufacturing for large-scale, low-cost battery production. The battery’s 3D ceramic solid-state electrolyte architecture is nonflammable, making it intrinsically safer to use and store and works with a multitude of cathode chemistries and cell configurations. The company grew out of one of UMD’s earliest ARPA-E awards, a RANGE award entitled, “Safe, Low-Cost, High Energy-Density, Solid-State Li-Ion Batteries” as well as a current EVs4ALL award “Fast-Charge, High-Energy-Density, Solid-State Battery” by ION founder, Dr. Eric Wachsman, UMD Distinguished University Professor and Director of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute (MEI²).

InventWood displayed their MettleWood, a biomaterial of unprecedented strength and durability that can replace 80% of all steel and concrete used currently. It is 50% stronger and 6 times lighter than steel. It consists of 100% wood and offers high performance while reducing climate-changing emissions. Because it is lighter than steel, it will greatly reduce transportation and construction costs, allow for easier handling and installation and faster building construction.

The SCALEUP program started in 2019, and only UMD, MIT, and Stanford related teams have received multiple SCALEUP awards with ION InventWood both receiving the maximum $20M award tying MIT for most SCALEUP award funding. Since ARPA-E’s inception in 2009, the University of Maryland (UMD) has received 52 awards for over $165M. UMD consistently ranks in the top three of university led ARPA-E awards.

Finally, Dr. Jay Lee, Clark Distinguished Professor and Director of the Industrial AI Center at UMD spoke during the breakout session on “Re-Visioning Industrial Infrastructure”. The panel explored the systemic challenges of legacy industrial infrastructure: its centralized nature, energy-intensive operations, heavy emissions footprint, operational inflexibility, and their implications for wages and workforce sustainability. Short-term transitional and long-term systemic pathways that will help increase U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, support workforce transitions, and drive investment in early-stage research and development to power an efficient modernization of industrial infrastructure were discussed.

“The breadth and depth of UMD’s energy innovation was on full display at the ARPA-E Summit with both more award booths than any university in the country and multiple awards in most of the programs we competed in” said MEI² Director Wachsman.

Published March 21, 2025