RCSA Announces Second-Round Scialog Fellows
Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) has announced its latest Scialog Fellows: recipients of grants awarded through Scialog®, a major new research initiative. This multi-year grant program accelerates the work of 21st-century science by funding early career scientists (either individuals or multi-disciplinary teams) to pursue transformative research, in dialog with their fellow grantees, on crucial issues of scientific inquiry.
The latest round of grants encompasses the second group of Fellows honored by the foundation. An initial group of 13 grant recipients was announced in 2010. All of the Fellows received grants for research in solar energy conversion of either $100,000 for individual researchers or $250,000 for qualifying teams of researchers. The grants fund innovative research that has transformative potential for rapid translational application and development by business and industry. They are designed to jump-start and accelerate research in the hope that federal and private funding sources will then extend development of this research and its applications. The research topic, Improving Efficiencies in Solar Energy Conversion, was chosen because reliable domestic sources of renewable energy are critically important for U.S. security, global stability and an environmentally sustainable economy.
The newly announced Fellows are:
| Dr. Ronald K. Castellano and Dr. Jiangeng Xue | Chemistry | $250,000 |
| University of Florida | ||
| A Modular Supramolecular Approach to Organic Photovoltaic Materials | ||
| Dr. Darren W. Johnson and Dr. Richard Taylor | Other | $250,000 |
| University of Oregon | ||
| Role of Fractal Patterns on New Materials for Solar Energy Applications: | ||
| Inorganic Clusters, Films and Fractal Geometry Simulations | ||
| Dr. Daniel R. Gamelin and Dr. David Ginger | Chemistry | $250,000 |
| University of Washington | ||
| Dopant-carrier Auger de-excitation as a new approach to multi-threshold solar | ||
| energy conversion devices | ||
| Dr. Sean Shaheen | Physics | $100,000 |
| University of Denver | ||
| Energy Pooling as a Novel Thermodynamic Mechanism for Organic Photovoltaics | ||
| Dr. Lei Zhai | Chemistry | $100,000 |
| University of Central Florida | ||
| Investigating Charge Transport and Recombination in Bulk Heterojunction Organic | ||
| Photovoltaics with Conjugated Polymer Columnar Structures on Graphene | ||
| Dr. Song Jin | Chemistry | $100,000 |
| University of Wisconsin, Madison | ||
| Enabling Solar Energy Conversion using Rational and Scalable | ||
| Growth of 1D Nanomaterials Made of Inexpensive Semiconductors | ||
| Dr. So Hirata | Chemistry | $100,000 |
| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | ||
| Computational Discovery and Optimization of Organic Photovoltaic Materials |
Each Scialog grant funds research for three years, and all Scialog Fellows will attend an annual closed meeting for researchers at Biosphere 2 in Oracle, AZ. The Scialog grant-selection process has been guided by a panel of internationally recognized scientists chosen from the research, scholarly and science policy communities. The chair of that panel is Dr. Nathan Lewis, the George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology.
"The Scialog Fellows hold enormous promise for our nation and our pursuit of the transformative - high-risk, high-reward - research on which our scientific innovation and economic leadership depend," said Dr. James M. Gentile, president of Research Corporation for Science Advancement. "As early career scientists focused on solar energy conversion, they are a major scientific force in addressing the need for alternative forms of energy."
About Research Corporation for Science Advancement
Research Corporation for Science Advancement - formerly known as Research Corporation - was founded in 1912 and is the second-oldest foundation in the United States (after the Carnegie Corporation) and the oldest foundation for science advancement. Research Corporation is a leading advocate for the sciences and a major funder of scientific innovation and of research in America's colleges and universities. Follow updates from RCSA on Facebook and Twitter.
