College of Engineering

March 25, 2025 BATON ROUGE — LSU and Battelle Energy Alliance, the company that manages Idaho National Laboratory (INL), have agreed to collaborate in areas of mutual interest, including cybersecurity and advanced nuclear technology, under a memorandum of understanding, or MOU. The MOU to be signed on Friday, March 28 aims to accelerate technology and talent development in Louisiana for the nation. This is the first formal partnership between a national lab and a university in Louisiana.

LSU Petroleum Engineering senior Jackson Dreffs is just a few months away from graduating and moving to Houston where he will start his new job as a wells engineer with BP (formerly British Petroleum). For the past four years at LSU, Dreffs has known what he wanted to do and will start off making a handsome salary in the oil and gas industry, which is also bringing him closer to his hometown of McKinney, Texas.

As climate change continues to increase the frequency and severity of natural disasters, the resilience of power grids has become a critical concern--especially in disaster-prone areas like New Orleans. Ensuring that energy systems can withstand and recover from disruptions is essential for maintaining public safety and economic stability. Thanks to a $500,000 grant from the LSU Institute for Energy Innovation, LSU Engineering researchers have developed The Resilience and Equity in Smart Community-Utility Energy Planning (RESCUE) project that aims to address these challenges by developing innovative community-aware strategies for energy resilience and equitable resource distribution.