Caribbean Connection: CEEE Ph.D. Student Mentors Hometown High Schooler

As a high school student in Jamaica, Tamoy Seabourne channeled his love of math and science into a life-changing opportunity, winning a scholarship that took him to the United States for a summer pre-college STEM program. That experience helped him earn admission to Rochester University, where he completed his B.S. in mechanical engineering before joining the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Energy Engineering (CEEE) in 2023 as a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering.

This past summer, Seabourne paid it forward, helping the next generation of Jamaican youth achieve their educational goals. As an instructor in the Caribbean Summer Scholars Program, Seabourne mentored a Jamaican high school student on a research project in thermodynamics. The nonprofit program aims to give Caribbean students exposure to courses and research topics that may not be taught in their high schools.

The virtual meetings started with Seabourne giving his mentee — a high school senior at Seabourne’s alma mater in Kingston, Jamaica — an introduction to research and helping him identify a problem to tackle. “At the end of the day, if you're doing engineering research, it’s about trying to solve a problem,” Seabourne stresses.

Under Seabourne’s guidance, the student took on an ambitious project — developing a solar thermal heater with the aim of offsetting the amount of gas needed for the combined cycle power plants used to generate electricity in Jamaica. Throughout the summer, Seabourne coached his mentee, pointing him toward resources, posing challenging questions, offering insights and reviewing the student’s work. When his mentee hit a wall, Seabourne encouraged him and emphasized that “finding out what doesn’t work is just as important as finding out what does work.”

Tamoy Seabourne

With Seabourne’s support, the mentee plowed forward, and by summer’s end proposed a design that would cut fuel costs by 5%. “This is actually a feasible project,” says Seabourne, who advised his mentee to refine the concept further — and to consider proposing the project to the Jamaican government.

“My goal for doing a Ph.D. is to innovate something that will save this world from this climate change crisis,” says Seabourne, whose research focuses on designing environmentally friendly, energy-efficient heat pumps. His team is developing a heat pump wood-drying system and a rooftop cold-climate heat pump, both of which would use refrigerants with low global warming potential.

Seabourne plans to work in industry after earning his Ph.D. but would like to eventually teach high school STEM courses. “With my own research, I could probably do one or two things to help save the world, but if I could teach 100 kids, I could help do 100 things,” says Seabourne. “It's just exponentially more advantageous in my goal of saving the world.”

Published September 16, 2024