White House celebrates one of Cleveland State’s own

Dr. Maryam Younessi, faculty member in CSU’s mechanical engineering department, was recently invited to the White House to participate in a roundtable on “Commercializing Climate and Clean Energy Technologies” for proposing a plan on the commercialization of energy technologies of national labs.

Dr. Younessi’s invitation to the White House was a result of her being honored with the prestigious EnergyTech University Prize from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). She was awarded one of ten prizes for her plans to increase energy entrepreneurship topics at CSU and emerged as the first-place winner for her implementation plan to expand energy technology commercialization of national laboratories at universities nationwide.

Roundtable participants included senior members of the White House and leaders from the DOE, National Science Foundation, and some of the top universities such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard and Princeton.

“During the roundtable, I felt a high responsibility of representing CSU and other universities that have significant roles in educating engineers in the U.S. but did not have a voice in that meeting,” she said. 

“After the talk, I was grateful for the opportunity to share my experiences, address some of our challenges, and receive validation for my ideas.”

She will begin implementing her plan — which aims to train engineering students on innovative energy technologies and current entrepreneurship and commercialization tools — at CSU as soon as the fall semester.