Project Bifacial solar concentrator Program DUIRI - Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship Term Summer 2026 Status Accepted Research Area solar energy, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering Description The goal of this project is the construction and validation of a new kind of portable solar concentrator with bifacial heliostats. A bifacial heliostat has two faces, a reflective face and a photovoltaic face. Depending on the time of the day and weather conditions, the heliostat orient one of their faces toward the sky. This is a hands-on project. Expect to build real hardware. Supervisor Walter Daniel Leon-Salas Mentor Jose M Garcia Bravo Type of work required The student is expected to design, build and test electronic and mechanical prototypes. The student is expected to collect measurements from field experiments and analyze data. The should be able to troubleshoot issues as they arise. Weekly progress reports and oral presentations are expected from the student. Websites https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~wleonsal/index.html Qualifications Experience with electronic prototyping and electronic measurement (oscilloscope, multimeter), soldering, 3D printing, programming in C, MATLAB and Python. Credit Hours 0 Weekly Hours 40 (estimated)