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Print Edition StoriesTuesday, April 28, 2009
MIT wins DOE funding for new energy research centers
By Mass High Tech staff
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Following a speech by President Barack Obama at the National Academy of Sciences annual meeting, the U.S. Department of Energy announced plans to establish two Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) at MIT.
The DOE will develop a total of 46 EFRCs at universities, non-profit organizations, national laboratories and private companies nationwide.
At MIT, a $19 million funding will establish the Center for Excitonics, which will study the role of charge carriers in synthetic disordered systems, to see which materials may be used to store electrical energy and convert solar energy to electricity. Marc Baldo, associate professor of electrical engineering and principal investigator at the Research Laboratory for Electronics, will direct the new center.
Another $17.5 million will help fund MIT’s new Solid-State Solar-thermal Energy Conversion Center, to be used in developing solid-state materials that transfer solar energy to electricity. Gang Chen, the Warren and Townley Rohsenow Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Pappalardo Micro and Nano Engineering Laboratories, will direct this EFRC.
The EFRCs, established with funding from the Recovery Act, are intended to create jobs -- in this case, for post-doctoral associates, undergraduates, graduate students and technical staff. The EFRCs will receive five years of funding, between $2 million and $5 million per year. The 46 chosen developments came from a pool of 260 applications.
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