RASEI Faculty

Dr. Denise H. Bale is currently the Managing Director of the Center for Integration of Modern Optoelectronic Materials on Demand (IMOD) and a Senior Research Associate in the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI). She received a B.S. degree in chemistry with honors from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA (2002). Her undergraduate research work in physical chemistry was conducted under the advisory of Prof. Mark E. Bussell. She joined...

Steve Barlow received his BA and D. Phil. degrees in Chemistry from the University of Oxford in 1992 and 1996 respectively. He has subsequently been a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech, a temporary faculty member at Oxford, and a research scientist at the University of Arizona and the Georgia Institute of Technology, joining RASEI in July 2021. His broad research interests concerns the synthesis and study of organic and metal-organic compounds...

Chrystie Burr, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of economics at CU Boulder. Her research interests are focused on the application of theoretical models and econometric techniques to issues in industrial organization and environmental and energy economics. Her recent researches include solar PV policy analysis, corruption, R&D and variations on Cournot oligopoly models. Her current projects examines the various impacts of O&G fracking activities in Colorado.

Jeffrey Cameron, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at CU Boulder. His research group focuses on the principles and mechanisms underlying the spatial and temporal organization of photosynthesis in cyanobacteria and eukaryotic organelles using synthetic biology and microscopy. Ancestors of modern day cyanobacteria were the first to perform oxygenic photosynthesis. These reactions have changed the atmospheric composition of this planet and have dramatically shifted...

Dr. Cuk obtained her Ph.D. in Applied Physics at Stanford University in 2007 and completed a Miller Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. She is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focuses on the fundamental mechanisms involved in converting an electric current into a storable fuel at solid-liquid (electrode-electrolyte) interfaces. To do this, she utilizes multiple time-resolved spectroscopies...

Kevin L. Doran, J.D., is an Institute Fellow and Research Professor at the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), a joint institute of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he leads the Law & Policy Group. He is an expert in the policy dimensions of power systems and electric grids, fossil energy, energy security, and technology innovation. Professor Doran is Director of...

Dr. John Farnsworth is an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to joining the faculty in 2014, he served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Aeronautics at the United States Air Force Academy for three years. Dr. Farnsworth received his Ph.D. in Aeronautical Engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 2011. He also received both his B.S. and M.S...

Dr. Bri-Mathias Hodge is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering and a Fellow of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also a Chief Scientist in the Power Systems Engineering Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). His research focuses on the modeling and simulation of power and energy systems, with an emphasis on the...

Adam Holewinski, Ph.D., is an Asst. Prof. in Chemical and Biological Engineering at CU Boulder. His research interests include efficient processes for the production of energy, as well as commodity and fine chemicals, with emphasis placed on electrochemical routes—i.e. the direct interconversion between electrical energy and the energy of chemical bonds. These processes are particularly suited to utilize power from renewables like wind and solar and can generally operate at...

Daniel Kaffine, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at CU Boulder. His research interests are in resource, energy and environmental economics. Recent and ongoing projects examine the impact of allowing hybrid vehicles to use HOV lanes, the general equilibrium effects of Renewable Portfolio Standards, the impact of wind power on emissions across the US, and the role of property rights and institutions in wind power development...

Michael Marshak, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of chemistry at CU-Boulder. His research program spans the fields of organic and inorganic chemistry to make new chemicals and materials. Specifically, he plans to investigate organic reactions featuring new transition metal catalysts, nanoparticle and thin-film materials, and chemical transformations related to biomass and carbon dioxide. Michael has helped to pioneer the use of organic materials called quinones for flow batteries, a promising...

Arthur J. Nozik, FRSC, is a Senior Research Fellow, Emeritus at NREL and Research Professor in the Department of Chemistry 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...

Dr. Reid has spent his career to-date studying photovoltaic energy conversion in molecular materials and developing instrumentation for this purpose. He obtained a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Washington in 2010, followed by a three-year postdoctoral appointment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He is currently an Assistant Research Professor in the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, University of Colorado Boulder.

Sean Shaheen, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering at CU-Boulder. His research interests focus on organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices for low-cost, renewable energy harvesting. His group and collaborators engage in a wide range of activities in OPV research, including studying fundamental aspects of energy transfer and exciton dynamics, measurements of charge transport and recombination behavior, and modeling of device physics using various numerical techniques. More...

Sadegh Yazdi, Ph.D., is a Research Associate Professor at the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), and the Director of the Facility for Electron Microscopy of Materials (CU FEMM) at the University of Colorado. His research interests include developing novel electron microscopy techniques for exploring the links between the underlying atomic arrangements of energy-related materials and their performance, properties, and synthesis. To characterize nanostructures at atomic levels, Sadegh uses advanced...

Prof. Alex Zunger of the University of Colorado, Boulder research field is Condensed Matter Theory of Real Materials, involving foundational work on Density Functional Theory, Pseudopotential theory, Quantum Nanostructures, Photovoltaic materials and Materials by Design (view website: www.inversedesign.org ; http://www.colorado.edu/zunger-matter-by-design/ ). He is the recipient of the year 2018 Boer Medal for photovoltaic research, the 2013 Hume- Rothery Award on Theory of alloys, the 2011 ( inaugural) “Materials Theory Award...