First-year Ph.D. students Mohammad Mundiwala and Aidan Lawlor from UConn’s Reliability Engineering and Informatics Laboratory (REIL) are contributing to the development of sustainable manufacturing solutions through innovative research in product design and remanufacturing.
Advised by Dr. Chao Hu, associate professor in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering within the College of Engineering, the team is working to help manufacturers extend the life of critical components and reduce environmental impacts through smart, data-driven design strategies.
Their research was recently presented at the 2025 Annual Member Meeting of the U.S. Department of Energy-supported REMADE Institute in Washington, D.C. The presentation highlighted a data-driven software tool that supports design decision-making by forecasting how changes affect cost, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions over multiple remanufacturing cycles.
This work underscores the potential for integrating sustainability considerations into the early stages of product development—enabling manufacturers to improve remanufacturability, reduce reliance on virgin materials, and contribute to a more circular economy.
Read the full article from UConn Today.