Professors Paul Barbara and Keith Stevenson awarded $15 million grant from U.S. Department of Energy to study breakthroughs in energy production

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is pleased to announce that Professor Paul Barbara, along with colleague Professor Keith Stevenson has received a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Science as part of President Obama's stimulus package. Professor Barbara and Professor Stevenson's team, termed an Energy Frontier Research Center, will consist of about 25 professors and graduate students that will study materials that scientists think have the potential to revolutionize the capture and storage of solar energy.

"Considering the urgency of the energy problem, the magnitude of the needed scientific breakthroughs and the historic rate of scientific discovery, current efforts will likely be too little, too late," the advisory committee that developed the guidelines for the grant proposals wrote in its report. "A new national energy research program is essential and must be initiated with the intensity and commitment of the Manhattan Project and sustained until this problem is solved."

Professor Barbara is the director of the Center for Nano and Molecular Science and Technology. He says researchers are in the early stages of looking at a carbon-based plastic that holds the potential to capture light energy many times more efficiently and cheaply than the materials used in making today's solar cells.

"I think we will be judged by how much we have changed the foundation of science," Professor Barbara said. "I think this project gives us a shared sense of purpose. Academic science should have a big societal impact."



Learn more about the Energy Frontier Research Centers program.

Learn more about research in the Barbara Group.

Learn more about research in the Stevenson Group.



Quotes taken from the Austin American-Statesman article "UT Professors' teams to explore crucial questions about energy" by Mark Lisheron