Irving Institute Student Grant Recipients Drive the Energy Transition

Photo courtesy of Leonela Espinoza Campomanes '27.

Hand-crafting wind turbines in the Andes

In the Andean and Amazon regions of Peru, rural electrification rates are among the lowest in the country, leaving many isolated communities without reliable access to power. As a native Peruvian, engineering sciences major Leonela Espinoza Campomanes '27 felt a personal connection to that challenge. Last summer, with the support of an Irving Institute Student Grant, she worked with WindAid to help address it. The organization manufactures and installs wind turbines in remote areas of the Andes near Trujillo.

Over three months, Campomanes contributed to every stage of turbine construction. She learned to apply fiberglass and carbon fiber to hand-craft turbine blades, then trained in welding and metal cutting to build the structural components.

"The process of building turbines is really an artisanal one," she explained. "At the beginning, it was a scary activity, but with my team always there to support me, I became really good at it."

Each month, the team also traveled to communities to install the turbines they had built. For Campomanes, those visits were as meaningful as the engineering work.

"I had the opportunity to interact with the mom of a family," she recounted. "She was describing to me how their lives were before WindAid and how much they struggled to see during the nights, and the difficulties that her children had because they could not study as much as they wanted."

The experience deepened Campomanes's sense of purpose as an engineer.

"Being part of the whole process and looking at the before and after of the projects motivated me to continue using my engineering skills to create social and environmental impact," she reflected. She also encouraged others to seek out similar experiences: "It may give you a different perspective on how energy transition is being done in a developing country."

Modeling the clean energy supply chain

The clean energy transition depends not just on deploying new technologies, but on securing the raw materials they require. Engineering sciences major Paul Griffiths '26 spent a term contributing to the Materials Demand Project, a research effort led by Professor Erin Mayfield's Sustainable Transitions Lab that examines the critical materials required to meet US clean energy goals under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Griffiths developed a modeling framework to estimate material demand for technologies like offshore wind, utility-scale solar, and electric vehicles under different scenarios, helping policymakers anticipate supply chain risks before they become bottlenecks.

"This project gave me a concrete way to apply my background in systems modeling and data analysis to a pressing societal challenge: ensuring that the materials supply chain can keep pace with ambitious climate goals," he noted.

The project also pushed Griffiths beyond the classroom, confronting him with messy, real-world data.

"I learned how important it is to document assumptions, justify statistical choices, and clearly communicate limitations," he reported. "At the same time, I saw how probabilistic modeling can transform limited data into actionable insight."

The experience reinforced a core conviction: "Effective energy policy must be informed by robust, transparent modeling, and engineers have a critical role to play in this space," he said.