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Association of Energy Engineers Student Chapter at Arizona State University®

Research & Resources

Who at ASU works on energy, and how to reach them.

ASU lists 56 research centers and doesn’t say which of them are about energy. The university’s own energy pages don’t map to how anyone actually thinks about the field. So we went through them, sorted the energy ones into the six areas we work on, and named the centers. Then the part everyone gets stuck on: the email.

01/Who works on what

Our six areas, and the ASU centers behind each

The same six areas the chapter programs around, matched to the centers at ASU that do the work. Where nothing at ASU maps to one of them we say so, rather than stretching a listing to fit — an empty square tells you something too.

02/Recent work

These are live places, not an org chart

A few things out of ASU labs recently, so the list above reads as people rather than institutions. All from ASU News.

03/Directories and funding

Where to search, and what pays

The directories are how you find a specific person. The funding programs are what turn helping out in a lab into a paid position with a deadline attached.

01

Find research

Start here if you don't know which lab you want yet.

02

Fulton programs & funding

03

Graduate students

04

Energy research at ASU

05

Knowledge Enterprise

ASU's research arm. Most students never touch any of this, which is the reason it is worth listing.

04 / How to start

Five steps, in the order we’d actually do them.

  1. 01

    Pick something you actually want to learn about

    Not the area you think looks best. You will be reading papers in it for a semester.

  2. 02

    Search the Energy Faculty Directory or the Research Experts Directory

    Find three or four faculty whose work overlaps with that area.

  3. 03

    Read their research pages and one recent paper

    You don't need to understand all of it. You just need to be able to say what it's about.

  4. 04

    Send a short, specific email

    Who you are, what you have read of theirs, what you can do and how much time you have. Five sentences.

  5. 05

    Watch FURI, SURI, UResearch and CareerLink

    The deadlines come around every semester, and most students miss them because nobody told them the dates.

Step four, written out

Nobody stalls on steps one to three. They stall here, because “send a short, specific email” is a restatement of the problem rather than help. So:

Subject: Undergraduate interested in your work on [topic]

Dear Professor [name],

I'm a [year] in [major] at ASU. I read your [year] paper on [specific
paper] and was interested in [one specific thing from it].

I've done [relevant coursework, project or skill — MATLAB, Python, lab
work, CAD, anything real]. I have about [n] hours a week this semester
and I'm looking for research experience.

Would you have time for a short meeting, or is there someone in your
group I should talk to?

Thank you,
[name], [ASURITE email], [phone]

Replace every bracket. The specific paper is the part that matters — it is the difference between an email that gets answered and one that reads as a mass send. Still stuck? Bring the draft to an event or drop it in Discord. Somebody there has sent this email before.

05/Certifications

What the letters after an energy professional's name mean

AEE is a certifying body before it is anything else. If you meet someone in this industry with initials after their name, they are usually AEE’s. Worth knowing what they are, and worth knowing early which one you can actually go for.

You almost certainly cannot sit the CEM yet. That is normal.

Every route to the CEM needs a completed degree and years of professional experience on top of it:

  • A four-year engineering or architecture degree, or a PE or RA license, plus three years of energy engineering or management experience.
  • A four-year physics, earth science, environmental science or technology degree, plus four years of experience.
  • A four-year business or other degree, plus five years of experience.

So when someone tells an undergraduate to “go get your CEM,” they have not checked. What exists for people in your position is EMIT, the Energy Manager In Training credential, for applicants who do not yet meet the CEM experience requirement. It holds for six years, which is meant to be enough time to earn the experience and convert.

The useful move as a student is not the exam. It is the experience clock: internships, a co-op, facilities work, an energy job of any kind. That is the part that takes years, and it is the part you can start now.

Exam
About 130 questions, four hours
Application and exam
$500, plus $250 to retake
Preparatory seminar
Required, typically $2,000–$5,000
Credentials AEE offers
31
Certified since 1981
More than 33,000 professionals
Becoming a CEM ↗CEM candidate handbook (PDF) ↗

Fees and eligibility routes change. These were taken from AEE’s own candidate handbook and are worth re-checking against it before you plan around them.

06/AEE, careers & learning

Beyond the university

Joining the chapter and joining AEE itself are two different things. Both are worth doing, and the student rate for the national organization is cheap.

01

AEE

The chapter sits inside a professional body with its own certifications, chapters and student programs.

02

Careers

03

Learn & explore

Two sources worth reading before your first energy interview.

Something missing or a link gone stale? Tell us and we’ll fix it.

Join

You don’t need an energy background. Just be interested.

Undergrad, master’s, PhD, any major — engineering, sustainability, business, computing, science, policy. Show up to one thing and see if it’s for you.

Join AEE at ASU