What will it take to build a cleaner, more resilient energy future? For 73 high school STEM students participating in the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering (WYSE) program, the answer began with a simple idea: learning to think in systems.
At three recent ReGen Lab workshops hosted by the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE), students from across the United States and around the world explored how different energy technologies can work together to address tomorrow’s challenges.
The experience started before students entered the Innovation Studio. Traveling to the workshop aboard a Champaign-Urbana MTD hydrogen fuel cell bus, participants experienced one piece of a future energy system firsthand before exploring the science behind it.
Led by Leon Liebenberg (NPRE), the three workshops combined hands-on experimentation, virtual reality experiences, and creative design activities. Students investigated photovoltaics, electrolysis for green hydrogen production, hydrogen fuel cells, and nuclear energy, focusing on how these technologies can complement one another as part of integrated energy systems. Professor John Abelson, co-founder of the Master of Engineering in Energy Systems program, discussed the history and development of photovoltaics while highlighting the generous support of the ReGen Lab’s main sponsors, Constellation Energy and the Paul Maxwell Coble Fund.
NPRE undergraduates Kennedy Dempsey, Nikunj Khandelwal, Cole Payne, and Danny Goldman guided students through interactive workstations where participants built circuits, tested energy conversion concepts, and explored the opportunities and limitations of different technologies. Virtual reality experiences, supported by specialists from the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning (CITL), allowed students to engage with energy systems that are difficult to experience in traditional classroom settings.
The workshops concluded with students creating and presenting miniature zines and futuristic newspaper headlines describing possible energy systems of 2050. Their visions extended beyond technology, incorporating ideas about communities, sustainability, energy security, and the societal impacts of engineering decisions.
The ReGen Lab emphasizes that solving future energy challenges will require more than developing individual technologies. Tomorrow’s engineers will need creativity, collaboration, and the ability to understand complex systems.
By combining technical exploration with imagination, the workshops encouraged students not only to learn about the future of energy, but to envision the role they might play in creating it.