Dr. Stacey Bent

Abstract:
Meeting the world’s growing energy needs sustainably is one of the most important challenges of our time.  Just eight nations consume nearly half of the world’s primary energy supply, largely from non-renewable sources, while over 2 billion people do not have access to modern energy systems. The presentation will introduce the scope of the energy problem and will describe some of the promising solutions on the horizon, with an emphasis on both research and innovation. Research examples from our laboratory, including the use of light concentration strategies to enable ultrathin materials in solar cells, will be presented.  We will also describe the development of an innovation transfer program within the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy which is designed to help inventors of sustainable energy technologies bridge the gap between research and commercialization. 

Biography:
Stacey F. Bent is Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Jagdeep and Roshni Singh Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, where she is appointed Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor, by courtesy, of Chemistry, of Materials Science and Engineering, and of Electrical Engineering. Professor Bent serves as the Director of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy and is a senior fellow in the Precourt Institute of Energy. Professor Bent obtained her B.S. degree in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Stanford. After carrying out postdoctoral work at AT&T Bell Laboratories, she joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at New York University. She moved to Stanford University in 1998.

Professor Bent’s research is focused on understanding surface and interfacial chemistry and materials synthesis, and applying this knowledge to a range of problems in sustainable energy, semiconductor processing, and nanotechnology. Her group currently studies new materials and processes for electronics, solar cells and solar fuels, and catalysts. She has published over 200 papers and has presented nearly 250 invited talks.

Professor Bent is associate editor of Chemistry of Materials.  She has been recognized with a number of awards for both research and teaching.  She is the Bert and Candace Forbes University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and has won the Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Stanford and the Allan V. Cox Medal for Faculty Excellence Fostering Undergraduate Research.  She is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and the American Vacuum Society (AVS), and has won the Peter Mark Memorial Award from AVS.  She received the Coblenz Award for Molecular Spectroscopy, a Beckman Young Investigator award, and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. She has been recognized as a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar and a Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar.

Please view the poster for more information.

This seminar is hosted by the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Notre Dame.