128th Distinguished Research Lecture: Michael McGehee
Harnessing Sunlight and Mentoring Startup Founders to Address Climate Change
Wednesday, November 18 @ 4–5 p.m. (Q&A and reception to follow)
Chancellor's Hall and Auditorium, Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE)
Professor Michael McGehee built his research group with a mission to pattern materials at the smallest length scales to address one of humanity’s biggest problems: global climate change. In this talk, he highlights two key inventions and the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that has been foundational to his approach.
The group’s early work on printable solar cells ultimately helped lead to perovskite tandem solar cells, which are 30 percent more efficient than conventional silicon solar cells and are now being developed by more than a dozen businesses, including spinouts Swift Solar and Tandem PV. McGehee and his students also invented windows with adjustable tinting that can reduce heating, cooling and lighting costs by 20 percent, leading to the founding of Tynt Technologies.
Students from McGehee’s lab have founded 22 companies. He will share lessons from these founders and how they inform his teaching in Boulder Climate Ventures, a course focused on climate entrepreneurship. The lecture will conclude with thoughts on the controversial subject of cooling the planet with optical geoengineering.
Michael McGehee is a professor of chemical and biological engineering and holds the James and Catherine Patten Chair in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. He is also affiliated with the Materials Science and Engineering Program, the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) and the National Laboratory of the Rockies. He is a co-founder and the chief scientist of smart-glass company Tynt Technologies.
McGehee received his PhD in materials science from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1999 and was a professor at Stanford University before joining CU Boulder in 2018.
His research team developed a method for making solar cells more efficient by stacking a cell made of a perovskite semiconductor on top of a silicon solar cell. Former students are commercializing this technology through startup companies Tandem PV and Swift Solar. McGehee leads a U.S. Department of Energy-funded consortium helping these companies make these tandem solar cells sufficiently durable to last 25 years.
His team also invented optical devices with adjustable tinting using reversible metal electrodeposition, a process that adds and removes metal to control the amount of light passing through. Windows with this technology can reduce heating, cooling and lighting costs in buildings by 20 percent. Tynt Technologies is applying this technology to augmented reality glasses.
Former students from his lab have founded 22 companies, including CelLink, Raxium, Molten Industries, Sinovia and Antora Energy. He is an instructor for Boulder Climate Ventures, which is supported by Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
He enjoys teaching students how to identify an important problem to solve, perform premarket research, change course if necessary, and launch successful companies.