How one student’s experience is helping to shape renewable energy education

In the midst of the complicated landscape of energy, economics, and environmental policy, third-year Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) student Ngaatendwe Manyika is helping to develop a new course for the next generation of engineers building renewable energy sources.  

This summer, with the guidance of practice assistant professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Lorena Grundy and support from Penn’s Environmental Innovations Initiative (EII), Manyika built small wind turbines that generate clean power, documenting each step. Her work, facilitated by Penn Sustainability and funded through EII’s Integrating Sustainability Across the Curriculum (ISAC) program and Penn School of Engineering and Applied Science's Academic Innovation Fund, will serve as a pilot for Grundy’s upcoming course, Renewable Energy Technologies Lab, to be offered in Fall 2026.

While testing the turbines, Manyika recalls a group of kids who called the test rig a “windmill.” That moment, she says reminded her that modern machines often have deep roots. She says in building wind turbines the approach is a way of solving the challenge of renewable energy generation in new ways.

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Manyika says that while some can find clean and renewable energy technology intimidating, she hopes to break down those misconceptions. In doing that, it may help to consider that “some of the technology has been with us for a long time,” she says.

Manyika first met Grundy and learned about the EII funding opportunity while taking Energy and Sustainability Science: Science, Engineering, and Technology (ENGR 5215) last semester. She was chosen as one of the three students funded by EII for the ISAC program this summer working 30 hours per week. She split her time equally working with Grundy on the renewable energy course and with Russell Composto of Materials Science and Engineering on a policy-focused course.

Grundy, a chemical engineer steeped in battery technology and polymers, says Manyika’s efforts over the last two months have helped identify what can be taught, built, and learned in a 15-week semester.

Manyika’s process involved a lot of trial and error: she says her turbines in the early wind-tunnel tests refused to spin. “The blades were mounted backward and at the wrong angle. When I scaled up outdoors, the stand wobbled. I tracked down an unfathomable number of rubber bands, but it still tipped and broke a blade,” she says.

“Then came hot glue,” says Grundy noting her goal with this course is to give students a uniquely grounded perspective in understanding what it takes to build renewable energy technologies.

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“As students apply their problem-solving skills to the biggest challenge of our time, climate change, it is important they feel what they are up against,” Grundy says.

Manyika’s efforts began with creating computer-aided designs in the “fishbowl” computer labs at Towne Hall. From there she worked in the MEAM Labs printing fan blades, employing laser cutting, soldering, and altering her design. Eventually the process led her to the chemical and biomolecular engineering lab space and, on windy days, out onto Shoemaker Green for final tests.

Notably, Manyika’s support team included educational lab coordinator Peter Bruno, who shepherded the wind-tunnel sessions and kept the wheels turning while senior lecturer Bruce Kothman, assisted her in the discovery of the reversed rotor blades. Aerodynamics, Wind, And Renewable Energy Lab’s Nathaniel J. Wei, provided her with a crash course in aerodynamics.

With Manyika’s input, the course that Grundy has been shaping asks students from such different corners of the field to meet at the center of a single working system. Teams will draw on electrical engineering to build and calibrate measurement circuitry and route power into a battery they assemble. Students will rely on chemical and biomolecular engineering to manage storage, safety, and electrochemistry. Mechanical engineering will help them to shape aerodynamics, gearing, and structures so moving air becomes useful power. And finally, Grundy says they will employ materials science to choose and test blade and hub compositions and refine surface finishes for lift and drag.

Grundy’s motivation for designing an interdisciplinary course like this stems from her own life spent at the intersection between sustainability, engineering, and energy devices.

“Growing up in Ohio, I always loved fixing stuff. My dad and I did all the repairs around my house, like rewiring the basement when I was 12,” she says. “My parents refused to just replace something that we had any hope of fixing ourselves.”

Manyika spent her teens in Harare, Zimbabwe, and says that when travelling to different parts of the countryside, she was inspired by the ingenuity in the face of scarcity she’d seen. “I've gone to villages and seen the irrigation systems they use, built out from scrap materials,” she says. “It’s really just so innovative, and it’s so motivating to see what they can do with so little.”

Her goal is to help bring affordable, reliable energy to people in Zimbabwe. Solar drew her into renewables, and she says wind has widened the path. She hopes to cut her teeth in California’s renewables sector, then carry skills and examples home.

“I want to bring free energy to my country,” she says. “No one should have to pay to get the opportunities I have been given. I think it starts with energy.”

As Grundy looks toward the fall 2026 semester and the official launch of the new class, she says she would welcome Manyika back in the room, perhaps as a teaching assistant to help the first cohort. “Our students give me hope every day,” she says. “Hope is not a plan, so the plan is project-based education. Give students a system to touch, let them push where it bends, see where it breaks, then try again.”