Preparing tomorrow’s clean energy leaders
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][mkd_section_title title="A multi-disciplinary course is training students across the scales of clean energy — from materials and devices to storage and power grid integration." title_size="small" title_color="" title_text_align="" margin_bottom="" width=""][vc_empty_space height="16px"][vc_column_text]December 12, 2022 By Chelsea Yates | Photos by Dennis Wise / University of Washington[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]“I’ve grown up witnessing climate change first-hand — more severe wildfires, draught, hurricanes, and the list keeps growing unfortunately,” says materials science and engineering (MSE) graduate student Arun Sundar. “We need to understand the broader effects of climate change, and we need to take action.” For him, this has meant a course of study in energy storage and emerging energy technologies. Sundar decided...
Exploring new materials through collaboration
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1655159667535{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]Jim De Yoreo’s career full of insights about materials will continue at the Energy Sciences Center[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1655154121223{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]June 13, 2022 | By Beth Mundy, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1655159679514{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]Scientists who study materials can be divided into three categories. “You have people who make things, people who make things do things, and people who try to understand why things do what they do,” said Jim De Yoreo, a Battelle fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). He places himself into the third category.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1655159687342{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]Through advanced microscopy techniques, De Yoreo has spent his career trying to understand and predict the...
Corie L. Cobb awarded DARPA Director’s Fellowship
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1643059363141{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]January 24, 2022 | By Andy Freeberg, UW Mechanical Engineering[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1643059398249{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]Corie L. Cobb, professor of mechanical engineering and the Washington Research Foundation Innovation Professor in Clean Energy, has been selected as recipient of the prestigious Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director’s Fellowship Award. Cobb is the first UW mechanical engineering faculty member to receive this honor.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1643059376239{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]In 2019, Cobb was one of 31 DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) recipients, and she received nearly $500,000 for her research. Cobb’s selection for the DARPA Director’s Fellowship will extend the agency’s support for her research with over $400,000 in additional funding. This...
Balancing science with service
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1638294754994{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]CEI Graduate Fellow Shua Sanchez is exploring the frontiers of new materials while striving for justice in his community [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1638294034006{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]November 30, 2021[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1638294188755{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]Growing up in small-town Wisconsin, Shua Sanchez’s exposure to science and university research was limited. At a young age, he became aware of climate change and read widely about ways to combat it, but it took until his final year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for him to decide on a career in the field.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1638467858449{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]Along the winding path of post-secondary education, Sanchez found his footing as a scholar and scientist. He...
NSF to fund revolutionary center for optoelectronic, quantum technologies
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1631656611024{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]September 9, 2021[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1631656627148{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]Originally published by UW News[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1631656633274{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]The National Science Foundation on Sept. 9 announced it will fund a new endeavor to bring atomic-level precision to the devices and technologies that underpin much of modern life, and will transform fields like information technology in the decades to come. The five-year, $25 million Science and Technology Center grant will found the Center for Integration of Modern Optoelectronic Materials on Demand — or IMOD — a collaboration of scientists and engineers at 11 universities led by the University of Washington.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1631656639659{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]IMOD research will center on new semiconductor materials and scalable...
The technology to reach net-zero carbon emissions isn’t ready for prime time, but…
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1629999372609{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]It’s already under development in research labs.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1629999391926{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]August 25, 2021[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1629999462620{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]By Daniel T. Schwartz | Originally published in Scientific American[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1629999477119{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]U.S. climate envoy John Kerry recently stated that in order to reach net zero emission goals by 2045, we’ll “need technologies we don’t yet have.” Well, he’s half right. It’s true that battling climate change requires innovative, technologically driven ideas that can be tested, replicated and scaled, at warp speed. But inventing wholly new technology isn’t necessarily the answer, nor is the idea we can deploy today's technology all the way to 100 percent clean energy.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1629999489451{padding-bottom:...
All together now: Experiments with twisted 2D materials catch electrons behaving collectively
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1602006386435{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 5px !important;}"]By James Urton, UW News[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1602005322374{padding-top: 5px !important;padding-bottom: 5px !important;}"]October 6, 2020 [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1602005344894{padding-top: 5px !important;padding-bottom: 5px !important;}"]Scientists can have ambitious goals: curing disease, exploring distant worlds, clean-energy revolutions. In physics and materials research, some of these ambitious goals are to make ordinary-sounding objects with extraordinary properties: wires that can transport power without any energy loss, or quantum computers that can perform complex calculations that today’s computers cannot achieve. And the emerging workbenches for the experiments that gradually move us toward these goals are 2D materials — sheets of material that are a single layer of atoms thick.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width="3/4"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1602005353517{padding-top:...
Designing cutting-edge materials from home
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1598373898336{padding-top: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]UW professors Ting Cao and Xiaosong Li bring computational science to the virtual classroom during COVID-19[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1598377715538{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]August 25, 2020[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1598373907152{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]When Governor Jay Inslee issued the Stay Home, Stay Healthy order to combat the spread of COVID-19 on March 23rd, University of Washington scientists and engineers faced a new challenge: how could they continue to experiment, innovate, and learn while most labs were closed?[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1598373915648{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;}"]For materials science & engineering (MSE) professor Ting Cao and chemistry professor Xiaosong Li, both Clean Energy Institute (CEI) member faculty, the shift to...
Matthew Yankowitz wins Army Research Office Young Investigator Award for layered 2D materials
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1600448608935{padding-top: 10px !important;}"]July 9, 2020[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1600448636333{padding-top: 10px !important;}"]Originally published by the University of Washington Department of Materials Science & Engineering.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1600450122381{padding-top: 10px !important;}"]Matthew Yankowitz, Washington Research Foundation Innovation Assistant Professor in Clean Energy and assistant professor of materials science & engineering and physics, has received the Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award from the Army Research Office, an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory. The objective of the YIP is to encourage and support young university faculty in research areas relevant to the Army. YIP awards are one of the most prestigious honors bestowed by the Army to...
Clean Energy Institute Graduate Fellow begins Princeton University physics professorship
Dr. Sanfeng Wu talks to CEI about his research in UW professor Xiaodong Xu’s lab, his recent postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, and the future of his work at Princeton. ...
Pushing magnetic materials to the atomically-thin limit
Magnetic materials are the backbone of modern digital information technologies, such as hard-disk storage. A UW-led team has now taken this one step further by encoding information using magnets that are just a few layers of atoms in thickness. ...
Designing and growing quantum materials for energy and information technology
UW physics professor Jiun-Haw Chu takes a holistic approach to the development and characterization of materials with new or unusual electronic and magnetic properties. ...