Back row: David Jonas, Art Nozik, Will Medlin, Seehee Lee, Steve Lawrence, Kevin Doran, Pat Moriarty
Center Row: Danielle Felix, Mike Himmel, Garry Rumbles, Carl Koval, Dan Dessau
Front Row: Angelo Mascarenas, William Boyd, Mike Knotek, Diane Stults, Robert Erickson, Maria Ghirardi, Julie Lundquist
William Boyd, Ph.D., J.D., is associate professor of law at CU-Boulder. Boyd worked in the U.S. Senate as counsel to the Committee on Environmental & Public Works, the committee of primary jurisdiction over climate change legislation. He then practiced energy and climate change law for several years in Washington, D.C., with a particular focus on carbon market design, electricity regulation, and renewable energy. He continues to be actively involved in legislative and regulatory debates on energy and climate change at state, national, and international levels, and is currently advising policymakers in Brazil, Indonesia, and the United States on regulatory design issues associated with efforts to integrate terrestrial carbon into climate policy.
Niels Damrauer, Ph.D., is assistant professor of chemistry at CU-Boulder. He and his team are developing a research program that brings together strategies for actively controlling the photochemical and photophysical reactivity of electronically, structurally, and reactively complex systems. He is especially interested in discovering new types of photochemistry as well as the physical and synthetic strategies for achieving it. Areas being targeted are control of photochemistry using complex shaped laser fields and control of excited-state transformations through synthetic manipulation of molecular structures that exploit large-amplitude molecular motions. This research is motivated to understand how energy and charge flow within complex systems, which is critical in efforts to convert sunlight to electricity or fuel stocks.
Dan Dessau, Ph.D., is a professor of physics at CU-Boulder. His research interests center around using femtosecond optics and electron spectroscopic tools for the study of the electronic structure, magnetic structure, and phase transitions of novel materials systems such as high temperature superconductors (HTSCs or cuprates) and colossal magnetoresistive oxides (CMRs or manganites). Dessau is leading research into tungsten oxide (WO3) compounds which have the potential for dramatic decreases in energy usage through applications such as "smart windows."
Kevin L. Doran, J.D., is an Institute Fellow and Assistant Professor-Research at the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), a joint institute of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is also the Managing Director for the Carbon Management Center (CMC), a multi-year research collaboration between the University of Colorado, NREL, the Colorado School of Mines, and Colorado State University. Most recently his research has involved an examination of public policy and regulatory issues pertaining to the implications of shale gas development for communities, environment protection, renewables, and geopolitics. Professor Doran holds a faculty appointment at the Colorado Energy Research Institute located at the Colorado School of Mines.
Robert W. Erickson, Ph.D., is a member of the faculty of electrical and computer engineering at CU-Boulder, where he served as department chair in 2002-2006. He is currently the Caroline and Wilfred Slade Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He co-directs the Colorado Power Electronics Center with Dragan Maksimovic. Erickson is a fellow of the IEEE and is the author of the textbook Fundamentals of Power Electronics, now in its second edition. He is the author of approximately 100 journal and conference papers in the area of power electronics. In 1996, he received the IEEE Power Electronics Society Transactions Prize Paper Award. His current research interests include modeling and control of power conversion systems, modular/multilevel converter systems, and power electronics for renewable energy sources (wind and solar).
Maria Ghirardi, Ph.D., is a principal scientist and group manager at NREL's Bioscience Center. Her record of successful DOE-funded projects in the area of biohydrogen is impressive, and she is recognized as an international expert in photobiological H2 production research, serving on a number of advisory panels. Ghirardi's current interest is in algal liquid fuels, in which she has contributed to the development of DOE's Office of Biomass Algal Roadmap. In addition she's been conducting research in photobiomimetics in collaboration with researchers at Arizona State University making strong in-roads in demonstrating an operational, truly hybrid system that uses inorganic, charge-separating devices, coupled to the hydrogenase enzyme for photoproduction of H2 gas.
Ryan Gill, Ph.D., is an associate professor, Patten Fellow, and C2B2 managing director at CU-Boulder. His research interest is directed genome evolution: new tools and applications. Gill's research falls within the general fields of metabolic engineering and directed evolution. The overarching objective of his group's work is to develop new genetic and genomic tools and applications to improve fundamental understanding of the evolution and engineering of relevant traits in bacteria of industrial and clinical relevance. The group is currently pursuing this objective within the context of bacterial stress tolerance traits, which are broadly significant across many metabolic engineering applications including industrial fermentations, bioremediation, and antibiotic resistance among others.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a research fellow at NREL. He is currently involved in the study of the general class of defective transition metal oxides including high temperature superconductors, LiTMO2 rechargeable Li battery materials, ferroelectric materials, transparent conducting oxides and electrochromic materials. His group is also focused on the development of new nano-materials for organic electronics such as organic photovoltaics and as biofilters etc. In the area of organic electronics Ginley is the principal investigator on the NREL effort on organic photovoltaics, which focuses on the development of new inorganic and organic materials for OPV and developing an understanding of the interfaces involved.
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, Ph.D., P.E. is professor of architectural engineering at CU-Boulder. His teaching focuses on thermal environmental engineering, building mechanical systems design, building control and automation systems, advanced solar systems, and sustainable building design. His research emphasizes model-based predictive optimal control and model-free learning control of building energy systems and building thermal mass, integration of commercial buildings with the electrical grid through realtime control, building occupancy detection, control strategies for mixed mode, and low-energy building energy systems. Henze has authored and co-authored 70 peer-reviewed technical papers and has received numerous ASME Best Paper Awards and is an associate editor for the ASME's Journal of Solar Energy Engineering.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a principal scientist and principal group manager (BioMolecular Sciences Group) at NREL. The BMS group is comprised of 30 staff scientists supported by programs and grants totaling about $11M per year. He is the NREL principal investigator for the DOE Office of Science funded BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) led by ORNL as well as a DOE SciDAC grant for building enhanced MD codes (co-led by M. Crowley). Himmel is also responsible for the Targeted Conversion Research Task (TCR) under the DOE Office of the Biomass Program. This work addresses new understanding at the macromolecular, atomistic, and mechanistic levels of the action of cellulases and other glycoside hydrolases on plant cell walls. Himmel has coauthored 225 peer-reviewed papers, 5 books, and holds 16 patents. He has also chaired or co-chaired 15 international meetings in the fields of biochemistry and biotechnology, including the 2002 and 2003 Gordon Research Conference on "Cellulases and Cellulosomes." Recently, Himmel was asked to serve as a reviewing editor for Science.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at CU-Boulder. Jonas and his group used femtosecond lasers to demonstrate the first optical analogs of early two-dimensional NMR experiments. The approach is now widely used to measure fast electronic and vibrational motions in disordered environments such as liquids, proteins, and semiconductors, but more work is needed to develop 2D spectroscopy as an analytical technique. Jonas' group has used 2D femtosecond spectroscopy to probe the fastest electronic motions within molecules, the vibrations coupled to those motions, and the coupled motions of the environment. Topics of interest include electronic dynamics at "conical intersections" between electronic potential surfaces, surface enhanced Raman scattering on metallic nano-particles, multiple exciton generation in semiconductor quantum dots, and other approaches to higher efficiency solar energy conversion.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a principal engineer and manager of the Thermal Systems Group at NREL. His projects have included the design and construction of a solar cooling test laboratory, the production of NREL's solar industrial process heat design handbook, the modeling of advanced power cycles and cooling systems for power plants, and the development of transpired solar air collectors. He currently manages the NREL research on parabolic trough solar collectors. He a fellow of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) and was ASES chair in 2000 and 2001. He was general chair of the SOLAR 2006 national solar energy conference held in Denver and will also serve as General Chair of the SOLAR 2012 national conference. He is editor of the 200-page ASES report, Tackling Climate Change in the U.S. (available at www.ases.org/climatechange), which details how energy efficiency and six renewable energy technologies can greatly reduce U.S carbon emissions by 2030. He is an adjunct professor at the CU-Boulder where he developed and taught "Climate Change Solutions." He is also a member and past chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department's Industry Advisory Council. Kutscher writes a monthly column about addressing climate change for SOLAR TODAY magazine (http://www.solartoday.org/).
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is an associate professor of operations management in the Leeds School of Business at CU-Boulder, where he teaches courses in supply chain management, technology management, and entrepreneurship. He previously served as associate dean for Programs, faculty chair of Executive Programs, and as Deming Professor of Entrepreneurship. Lawrence is the recipient of number teaching awards, including the MBA Teaching Excellence Award in Spring 2000. He previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the University of Pittsburgh. Lawrence's research interests include operations scheduling, supply chain lead time estimation, technology selection and acquisition, and topics in sustainable energy. His research has been published in a number of well-known academic journals.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is an associate professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, CU-Boulder. His primary research interests have concentrated on nanostructured materials for energy applications, and his laboratory expertise includes thin-film deposition (evaporation, sputtering, PE-CVD, sol-gel synthesis, etc.), electro-optic characterization, AC impedance spectroscopy and electrochemical deposition and analyses techniques. During his ten-year tenure at NREL, he was engaged in the research and development of a variety of technical subjects: solid-state thin-film lithium batteries, nano-composite supercapacitors for energy storage, ion-insertion mechanisms in advanced materials, fundamental aspects of electrochromic window degradation, fiber-optic hydrogen sensors based on chemochromic actuation and novel opto-electronic phenomena involving nano-scale materials. Lee is currently advising students at NREL to work on nanostructured battery materials for renewable energy applications. Recently the team demonstrated successful collaborative efforts that led to the development of novel battery materials for next generation electric vehicles.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is an assistant professor at CU-Boulder. She and her group investigate the dynamics of the atmospheric boundary layer, with applications to wind energy, urban meteorology, and surface-atmosphere interaction. They employ numerical weather prediction models such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and other large-eddy simulation capabilities, and they participate in field experiments to expand our understanding of the atmospheric boundary layer. To support broad integration of wind energy into power grids, her group investigates the effects of atmospheric stability and atmospheric turbulence on turbine power production, the local microscale impacts of wind energy, methods for forecasting wind power availability, and the interactions between climate change and wind power generation. Lundquist enjoys a Joint Appointment at NREL's National Wind Technology Center.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a principal scientist and team leader for Solid State Spectroscopy in the Center for Basic Sciences at NREL. He works in the area of spectroscopic research on photovoltaic materials for improved and advanced solar cells. He has done extensive research on harnessing the material consequences of semiconductor alloy instabilities such as spontaneous ordering and spontaneous composition modulation for optoelectronic applications. His current research focuses on the phenomenon of isoelectronic co-doping for tailoring the optical properties of semiconductor alloys and its applications to very high efficiency solar cells, solid state lighting, and advanced communication lasers, as well as on the phenomenon of amphoteric refraction observed in ordered materials. He is the author of more than 200 research publications and the editor of one book and two conference proceedings related to self-organized phenomena resulting from kinetic and thermodynamic instabilities in semiconductor alloys. He has authored several invited papers and book chapters, organized several symposia, and is a co-inventor on five patent applications related to advanced concepts for solar cells.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is an associate professor, ConocoPhillips Faculty Fellow, and Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels (C2B2) Co-Founder and Site Director at CU-Boulder. Medlin and his group investigate reactions at solid surfaces for renewable and sustainable energy applications. The group is particularly focused on interfacial chemistry important in the conversion of biomass to fuels and chemicals. Biomass-derived carbohydrates and lipids contain a high degree of oxygenate functionality, and it is a major challenge to develop new catalysts capable of selective conversions of these oxygenates to useful fuel and chemical products. A major emphasis of Medlin's group is to design such catalysts based on a molecular-scale understanding of the oxygenate-catalyst interaction. The group also conducts research in interfacial chemistry related to hydrogen fuel cells by gaining a fundamental understanding of how key physical features of the electrocatalytic interface control the mechanisms for key reactions, so that improved electrocatalysts can be designed.
Charles Musgrave, Ph.D., is a professor of chemical and biological engineering and professor by courtesy of chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder. His program involves the application of a wide variety of quantum mechanical modeling methods to problems in the energy sciences. His program includes research on photovoltaics, including singlet fission and exciton transport and splitting for more efficient organic solar cells; catalysis, including the chemical reduction of CO2 and water splitting; and energy storage, including research on batteries and pseudocapacitors. These efforts aim to understand the fundamental processes of energy conversion and storage to guide the development of future advanced energy technologies.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is principal program manager, planning and program development at NREL. Prior to joining NREL, Newmark was at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where her research focused primarily on energy, environment, and national security. In recent years, she has led or contributed to programs involving energy, climate, and water issues, including the interdependence of water and energy systems, including a water initiative with components addressing the impacts of climate change on water resources, assessing denitrification in agricultural regions, and the development of energy-efficient, selective water treatment technologies. Newmark is an active member of the multi-national laboratory Energy-Water Nexus working group, the World Resources Institute Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Stakeholder Group and the U.S. – China Expert CCS Steering Committee. She is an author of more than 50 papers, reports, and patents, past vice president of the Near Surface Geophysics Section of the Society of Exploration Geophysicsts, past associate editor for Geophysics, and at the Center of Integrated Water Research at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at NREL and professor adjoint in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at CU-Boulder. In 2009 Nozik, was selected as associate director of a joint Los Alamos National Lab/NREL Energy Frontier Research Center for DOE. In 2007, he was appointed the scientific director of the new Center for Revolutionary Solar Photoconversion under the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory. Nozik's research interests include size quantization effects in semiconductor quantum dots and quantum wells, including multiple exciton generation from a single photon; the applications of unique effects in nanostructures to advanced approaches for solar photon conversion; photogenerated carrier relaxation dynamics in various semiconductor structures; photoelectrochemistry of semiconductor-molecule interfaces; photoelectrochemical energy conversion; photocatalysis; optical, magnetic and electrical properties of solids; and Mössbauer spectroscopy. He has authjored or co-authored more than 200 papers and book chapters in these fields, written or edited 5 books, holds 11 U.S. patents, and has delivered more than 250 invited talks at universities, conferences, and symposia.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is the Richard and Joy Dorf Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering at CU-Boulder. She was a visiting scholar at Harvard University during 2001-2002 and a visiting Miller professor at the University of California at Berkeley in Fall 2008, and a visiting researcher at NREL from January to August 2009. She has interests in the areas of control systems (with applications to flexible structures, atomic force microscopes, disk drives, tape systems, power converters, and wind turbines), multisensor data fusion (with applications to unmanned autonomous vehicles, satellites, and automotive active safety systems), and haptic and multimodal visual/haptic/audio interfaces (with applications to scientific visualization and spatial communication). She currently serves as the Scientific Director of the Center for Research and Education in Wind (CREW).
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is senior scientist, leading fuel cell R&D activities at NREL. Pivovar has been involved in fuel cell research for more than 15 years, He joined NREL in May of 2008, and since has grown a fuel cell R&D program that had ~$100k/yr funding, into a program that has a projected annual budget of ~$5M/yr for 2010. Prior to joining NREL, Pivovar was at Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) where as team leader and acting program manager for the fuel cell team, he oversaw ~$7M/yr in applied and fundamental fuel cell research. The team at Los Alamos is widely viewed as the top fuel cell research group in the world.
Mike Robinson, Ph.D., is deputy director of the National Wind Technology Center at NREL, which provides the wind industry with the expertise, technical support, and equipment it needs to develop successful advanced wind energy systems. He manages basis and applied research activities for DOE's wind technology application activities at NREL, including low wind speed technology, enabling research, offshore wind and ocean technology programs. Robinson was a lead author for DOE's 20% Wind Energy by 2030 report in 2008.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a physics professor at CU-Boulder. His laboratory has a long history of work on thin-film materials including energy-oriented materials such as high temperature superconductors and transparent conductors, with the best collection of novel thin-film growth systems available on the CU-Boulder campus (four laser ablation systems, six-target sputtering system, 9kV e-gun deposition system, two thermal evaporators). The lab also has a long history of working with nanofabricated electronic devices and in studying the electronics and optics of reduced dimensional materials systems and devices.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a research fellow at NREL and an adjoint professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at CU-Boulder. Rumbles joined NREL in 2000 and is widely recognized for his research in photochemistry and photophysics of conjugated molecular systems, energy conversion in organic light emitting diodes and organic photovoltaic devices, and nanoscale morphology. In 2004, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Rumbles has published more than 130 journal articles and more than 10 book sections. Rumbles' current research interests are in solar energy with a focus on the basic science of solar photoconversion processes and photoinduced electron transfer processes in polymer-based nanostructured interfaces. His primary research expertise lies in photochemistry and photophysics, with a specialty in kinetics.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and the NSF-sponsored Soft Matter Materials Research Center at CU-Boulder. Smalyukh's research centers on organizing principles of nanoscale material self-assembly and light-matter interactions. Smalyukh and his research group are studying the long-range ordered molecular and nanoparticle organization with the focus on applications in organic photovoltaic solar cells. Smalyukh is organizing annual inter-continental advanced materials for photonics (I-CAMP) summer schools (http://icamconferences.org/i-camp.html ), which bring together both prominent and junior scientists and allow them to combine advanced education at the interface of materials science and optics/photonics with learning about different cultures worldwide. Smalyukh is a faculty advisor of SPIE and MRS student chapters of CU-Boulder.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a research fellow at NREL. Turner is recognized as a world–class scientist and international spokesperson for hydrogen energy and for his contribution in hydrogen production via photoelectrochemical splitting of water and in the development of fuel cells. He received the DOE Office of Science Outstanding Mentor Award and has co–authored more than 100 technical publications.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Ph.D., is a senior scientist and group leader in NREL's Basic Sciences Program. He is researching tunneling-induced luminescence and plasmon-resonance imaging of individual quantum dots and other nanostructured systems, the interaction between carbon nanotubes and organic semiconductors, as well as the use of plasmonic-enhancement effects in solar-energy conversion systems. Following his postdoctoral research at NREL, van de Lagemaat worked on the energetics and transport properties of single semiconductor nanoparticles (quantum dots) and arrays of nanoparticles using tunneling spectroscopy and microscopy, transient photocurrent, transistor measurements, and computer modeling.