James McCullagh of Creathadh Energies, LLC

Description:

The automotive industry, for instance, uses semi-active and active suspension systems to recover part of the vibration in the suspension and convert it into electrical energy. This presentation will focus on the discrete and integrated vibration interface circuits used to interface to vibration harvesters. 

This includes patented circuits developed in 180nm Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) to harvest from low voltage, low current vibration harvester outputs. Applications for vibration harvesting such as bridge-based harvesting, animal-based harvesting, and human-based harvesting will be explored as well as the challenges in the commercialization of vibration energy harvesting
systems will be discussed. 

Biography:

James McCullagh grew up in Cedar Falls and graduated from Price Lab/NU High School. Beginning coursework at the University of Northern Iowa, he graduated with a Bachelor of Physics from Carleton College. He then earned a Master of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University. After graduating from Purdue, James designed integrated circuits for hard drives and communication devices working for
companies such as IBM and Hitachi. Following this he was awarded the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) National Fellowship to pursue a PhD in Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where he graduated in 2014.

This provided him the insights to invent novel vibrational energy circuits and win a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the National Science Foundation and start his own energy company.

Address:United States