The Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, known more commonly as CRREL, sits unassuming only about two miles north of campus. I, for one, have passed it frequently on drives up to Lyme or the Skiway — but had yet to fully understand the story behind the military laboratory that works to solve “strategically important problems … in cold and complex regions.” That is, until I spoke to the Dartmouth professors and students who research there.
The College originally leased the land on which CRREL sits to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1961, establishing a longstanding collaborative relationship. According to Professor Jifeng Liu, CRREL and Dartmouth kicked off a new collaboration on energy systems research in 2019.
Liu, one of the primary researchers on the energy systems project, said he found the partnership between the College and CRREL a natural extension of his work on “energy materials,” or seeking to “enhance energy efficiency and harvest renewable energy,” he explained.
“We [Dartmouth researchers] sat down together with CRREL and [figured out] what our common interests were in terms of research,” Liu said. “It came out soon enough that this kind of waste heat recovery and [working with] batteries could be very interesting.”
Liu explained that his research seeks to find new metallic alloys to “reharvest the waste heat in diesel generators at active bases,” which he said is very useful in cold regions.
“The outside environment [of these bases] is Arctic,” Liu said. “… Neutralizing that temperature difference, you can generate a substantial amount of electricity. … The other side of this project is … to use this energy to charge batteries.”
CRREL’s focus on studying cold regions makes it a relatively unique facility. According to research materials engineer and Thayer School of Engineering adjunct professor Emily Asenath-Smith, the cold regions field, which is “largely void of standards,” provides researchers opportunities for creativity.
“What attracted me was the space for creativity around finding a solution — having that creative license really resonates with who I am,” she said.
Asenath-Smith is the lead investigator in the ice adhesion and advanced materials team at CRREL and works on a project with one primary focus: ice, which she jokingly called “a hot topic” because of its current prevalence in federally funded projects.
“Traditional engineering materials are terrible for ice accumulation — ice will just pile up on those things,” Asenath-Smith said. “The field of ice adhesion takes the perspective of, ‘Let’s change the surface chemistry or structure to mitigate ice accumulation that creates problems.’”
CRREL’s research is significant for cold regions of the world — Liu’s research, for example, can be directly applied to generators on military bases but also has much wider applications. According to Liu, his research at CRREL seeks to find out “how you can boost efficiency of any energy usage in cold regions.”
“The Arctic is a more extreme case because using conventional fossil fuels in those regions can be very expensive,” Liu said. “[But our research] also benefits the New England area, Alaska, Canada — it could have an impact in any cold region.”
Outside of the lab, both Asenath-Smith and Liu make efforts to include the Dartmouth community in their research — primarily by offering graduate and undergraduate students the opportunity to work on their projects. According to Asenath-Smith, this symbiotic relationship is supported “at a high level” by both Dartmouth and CRREL to help develop students’ research skills.
“When a student works with me, they actually do the research in the lab at CRREL,” Asenath-Smith said. “They are just as involved as anyone else because in my role as their research mentor, the onus is on me to make sure they’re developing … research skills.”
According to Asenath-Smith, the First Year Research in Engineering Experience “pair[s] up new students with research interests and professors,” allowing undergraduate students to gain exposure to engineering research from the beginning of their time at Dartmouth.
Hayden Barry ’25 became involved with Professor Asenath-Smith’s CRREL lab through FYREE her freshman year. She was interested in studying ice because of her willingness to “work in really cold temperatures,” she said.
“I’m from Michigan, so I was totally okay with working in the cold,” Barry said. “For my freshman and sophomore year [lab work], a lot of what I did was in the cold rooms, which are kept at zero [degrees] Fahrenheit.”
James Quirk ’25 also became involved with Asenath-Smith’s lab during his freshman winter and has continued working part-time since then. While the exact scope of his research has changed, he has appreciated exposure to “various research projects.”
“What I was previously doing was surface characterization of aluminum materials [and] ice adhesion,” Quirk said. “… Now, I’m working entirely with ice, analyzing ice microstructures through the lens of machine learning.”
The projects at CRREL allow researchers the chance to chart new paths with their work — a privilege that Barry says Asenath-Smith has passed down to her student workers. According to Barry, working at CRREL has been a valuable opportunity to “take more ownership over [her] projects” — her original work has even evolved into a senior honors thesis in which she is studying the accuracy of thermal hysteresis measurement techniques with support from CRREL.
“[This fall], I started working on the project that’s now my honors thesis,” Barry said. “It was one of the first projects where I ultimately was able to come up with what I wanted the deliverable to be myself.”
For Quirk, the hands-on engineering experience from CRREL has allowed him to explore different subfields and chart his own path into a post-graduate career.
“I started in chemistry, and it was a worthwhile investment in learning research skills, but it also proved to me there were other realms I was more interested in,” Quirk said. “[CRREL] catered to that too — that’s why I’ve shifted more into the realm of computer science because they’ve recognized the impact that being enthusiastic about your work has on your output.”
The applications of CRREL’s research could have wide-reaching implications across cold regions — but here in Hanover, the Dartmouth professors and students who research at CRREL also benefit from the close partnership. Overall, Liu said he feels “very happy” to work with CRREL as well as his student researchers.
“The collaborations and the goals of the work are absolutely fantastic, and I greatly appreciate their support,” Liu said. “I hope to find even more opportunities to work together.”
Correction Appended (Feb. 7, 2:43 p.m.): A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Dartmouth-CRREL partnership began in 2019. The two have collaborated since 1961 and kickstarted a new collaboration on energy systems research in 2019.
