Recognition

128th Distinguished Research Lectureship: Michael McGehee

Daniel Morton — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 15:42:19 +0000

128th Distinguished Research Lectureship: Michael McGehee Daniel Morton Tue, 10/13/2026 - 09:42

Daniel Morton

Michael McGehee, Patten Chair Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering, and RASEI Fellow, has been selected as a ��ñ�� 2026-2027 Distinguished Research Lecturer.

Harnessing Sunlight and Mentoring Startup Founders to Address Climate Change

Michael McGehee

Wednesday, November 18, 2026

4:00 - 5:00 PM

Chancellors Hall and Auditorium, CASE

More Information

The Distinguished Research Lectureship is among the highest honors bestowed by the faculty of ��ñ�� upon a faculty member. The selection is made based on the scholarship, research, and creative achievement of the nominee, in this case recognizing McGehee’s mission to use materials science to mitigate and combat the impacts of climate change.

Research in the McGehee group has deep roots in using nanoscience to solve big problems. Earning his undergraduate degree in Physics from Princeton University in 1994, Mike moved across the country to the University of California at Santa Barbara to pursue his graduate studies. Working in the lab of Alan Heeger (Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 2000 with Alan MacDiarmid for “their discovery and development of conductive polymers”), Mike designed and built a polymer-based laser, triggering a fascination with how materials emit and absorb light. Completing his Ph.D. studies in 1999, Mike moved north, joining the faculty of Stanford University in 2000 where he began his independent research career. The McGehee group moved to ��ñ�� in 2018.

Research in the McGehee group set out with one ‘simple’ mission statement, to use materials science to prevent climate change. This has provided a rich space for scientific investigation, delivering an excellent forum for group members to explore new directions and ideas and for the team to build successful collaborations across academia and industry, as well as address some of the most pressing challenges. Two key areas have emerged in recent years that will form the basis of this year’s lecture, one focused on how we harvest energy from light, the other on how we regulate light. While the lecture is built around these scientific challenges, McGehee emphasizes that the main thread of the talk, that is foundational to the science, is the culture and approach to research that his team has established.

Early work in the McGehee group set out with the aim of creating a solar technology that would provide at least 20 % of the world’s energy. The goal was to use organic molecules to harvest the energy, replacing the conventional silicon-based cells. Solar cells based on these organic molecules offer several benefits, being flexible instead of rigid makes manufacturing more affordable (taking advantage of printing approaches), producing a more robust device, and offering new form factors. Though the promise of organic solar cells has yet to be realized, McGehee’s team identified a promising approach along the way, inventing perovskite tandem solar cell technology. This device architecture stacks a layer of new material, so-called perovskites, on top of the silicon layers present in conventional solar cells. One might think that by adding a layer on top of solar cell you would decrease the efficiency of how it absorbs light, (like putting on sunglasses over the absorber), but in this case the opposite is true. Sunlight is made up of a range of wavelengths, think about the rainbow going from the low energy reds through to the high energy violets. Silicon absorbs best at the low energy end, essentially absorbing the red and orange wavelengths. The perovskite materials absorb at the higher wavelengths, harvesting the energy of the blue and violet wavelengths. By stacking these on top of each other more energy from the sun is collected overall and less is lost to waste heat. The McGehee group has developed tandem perovskite-silicon solar cells that are 30 % more efficient than current conventional silicon solar cells. This technology is now being advanced by more than a dozen companies, including spinouts from the McGehee group Swift Solar and Tandem PV working to manufacture the next generation of solar panels in the United States. McGehee now leads the DOE-funded TEAMUP consortium of academic, national lab and industrial partners focused on solving the challenges associated with scaling and commercializing this technology.

The environmental impacts of energy can be mitigated not just by changing how we generate electricity, but also how we use it. Improving the efficiency of technologies reduces the consumption, cost, and impact of their energy use. Buildings account for around 30 % of global energy demand. In advanced economies this is primarily used for heating and cooling the air. The McGehee group focused on how they could control sunlight, in this case regulating how it enters buildings. Occupants want the insulation of a wall but with the transparency of glass – no one wants to live in a dark box! The group explored the use of electrochromic materials, materials that change their light transmission characteristics upon the application of a voltage. The group invented windows with adjustable tinting that can reduce heating, cooling, and lighting costs in buildings by an estimated 20 %. Tynt Technologies, founded in 2020, is commercializing this smart window technology, demonstrating an industry-leading light transmission range, from 0.01 % - 90 % transmission.

Talk to McGehee about his research and you find someone who is passionate and excited to solve big problems and apply new scientific ideas in making an impact on society. Rapidly the conversation turns to talk about his current and former team members and all of the great work they are doing. There is an enormous sense of pride in their achievements. Students who have worked in the McGehee group have now founded 22 companies, making an impact across a wide range of technologies. The scope of them is broad, manufacturing everything from solar cells and thermal storage materials, through circuits that connect batteries in electric vehicles and electrodes in batteries, to energy efficient windows, flexible OLED displays and microLED displays for augmented reality eyewear. This breadth of exploration is testament to a training that encourages the development of a problem-solving approach that can be leveraged to work on many different problems. As part of this lecture McGehee will explain what he has learned about what the startup founders he has mentored do that makes them successful, especially when they turn their attention to problems that are unrelated to the ones they addressed as students. These lessons are the basis of what McGehee teaches in the new Boulder Climate Ventures course at ��ñ��.

Mike McGehee and Kevin Coakley at CelLink

Outside of work Mike makes the most of what the Front Range has to offer. With a love of the outdoors he can most often be found hiking, biking, or teaching his kids to rock climb.

The ��ñ�� Distinguished Research Lectureship has recognized some incredible talent from across the university. Mike McGehee will deliver the 128^th Distinguished Research Lecture at 4 PM November 18, 2026, we suggest you make plans to attend to find out more about this pioneer materials research for environmental challenges, and how to foster a collaborative and entrepreneurial culture.

OCTOBER 2026

Off

Traditional

White

Interdisciplinary team takes on Colorado’s geothermal puzzle

Daniel Morton — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 19:52:18 +0000

Interdisciplinary team takes on Colorado’s geothermal puzzle Daniel Morton Wed, 09/30/2026 - 13:52

A RASEI engineer and a geographer have won a New Frontiers Grant to find out why geothermal energy, abundant across Colorado, remains largely untapped.

Geothermal is one of the few renewable resources that runs around the clock, rain or shine. Colorado has plenty of it, but very little is being used.

Geothermal energy draws on heat stored beneath the Earth’s surface, and it comes in two main forms:

Deep geothermal taps hot rock and water far underground to generate electricity.
Shallow geothermal uses the steady temperature just below ground to heat and cool buildings, either one building at a time or through networks that serve a whole neighborhood or campus.

This project looks at both.

The big picture: Colorado is betting on geothermal. Governor Jared Polis signed a law this year that aims to cut regulatory hurdles for thermal energy network providers and encourage local utilities to help develop geothermal power projects. In April, the state awarded another $12.4 million in tax credits and funding for seven new geothermal projects, spanning both building heating and cooling and electricity generation.

However: Policy and funding alone haven’t unlocked the resource. Technical and social barriers have both slowed development, and neither is well understood. Getting to the bottom of these problems takes more than engineering, and that’s the gap this project aims to fill.

The team: The project pairs two very different areas of expertise.

Bri-Mathias Hodge leads the project. He is a Professor and Associate Chair for Research and Graduate Education in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, and an Associate Director and Fellow of RASEI. His research centers on modeling and simulating power and energy systems, especially the challenges of integrating renewable sources like wind and solar.
Shae Frydenlund brings the social science lens. She is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Center for Asian Studies and earned her PhD in geography at ��ñ��, with research interests including political ecology, dispossession, and urban development.

Helping move the transition forward: Energy projects succeed or stall based on people as much as technology: who lives nearby, who owns the land, who benefits, and who decides. Putting an engineer and a human geographer on the same team lets the project study the full picture.

The team will investigate the barriers holding geothermal back. The goals are to expand the use of this renewable resource in Colorado and to build ��ñ��’s leadership in the field.

New Frontiers is a campus-wide program run by ��ñ��’s Research & Innovation Office. It funds interdisciplinary projects with the potential for high impact. This award builds on a planning grant the team received in 2025.

SEPTEMBER 2026

Off

Traditional

White

��ñ��’s “Frozen Air” window material wins gold in R&D 100 Green Tech Awards

Daniel Morton — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:21:31 +0000

��ñ��’s “Frozen Air” window material wins gold in R&D 100 Green Tech Awards Daniel Morton Fri, 08/07/2026 - 13:21

Daniel Morton

RASEI Fellow Ivan Smalyukh’s transparent heat-blocking material, MOCHI, just received top honors in the R&D World’s 2026 Special Recognition: Green Tech Category.

Buildings consume roughly 40% of the energy generated worldwide, much of it being lost through windows. Insulating walls is relatively easy, but insulating glass, while keeping it clear, is not. “Finding insulators that are transparent is really challenging,” explains Smalyukh.

MOCHI, the Mesoporous Optically Clear Heat Insulator, is a silicone gel built around a dense network of air pockets that are each many times thinner than a human hair. Because the pores are so small, gas molecules trapped inside them can’t collide and transfer hear in the way they normally do, they just bounce off the walls of the pockets. This means that the material blocks heat so effectively that a 5 mm (1/5 of an inch) sheet can let you hold a flame in your palm. The material transmits 99.5% of visible light, making it clearer than most glass. MOCHI reflects just 0.2% of incoming light, avoiding cloudiness associated with traditional aerogels. The material comes in slabs or thin sheets that could apply directly to existing windows.

Now in its 64^th year, the global science and innovation competition included an international panel of judges, bringing together more than 50 industry professionals. The judges ranked MOCHI gold among three Green Tech honorees, ahead of a carbon sequestering concrete block and solar reflecting cooling paint. All three winners also placed among the 2026 R&D 100 finalists.

This is the second major honor for the Smalyukh group’s push to develop practical transparent insulation technologies. In 2024 the team’s cellulose-based aerogel, SiCellA, earned a Guiness World Record for the most transparent material ever made.

MOCHI is still made by hand in the lab, but the team says that the ingredients are inexpensive and the process can be streamlined. Before it can be deployed in real windows, skylights, and even vehicle windshields, manufacturing needs to be scaled up, the next milestone on the development from lab bench to commercialization.

AUGUST 2026

Off

Traditional

White

Cutting Building Energy Use by a Third, One Neighborhood at a Time

Daniel Morton — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 18:29:56 +0000

Cutting Building Energy Use by a Third, One Neighborhood at a Time Daniel Morton Sun, 06/28/2026 - 12:29

Daniel Morton

What if the buildings in a neighborhood could share their heat the way a carpool shares a ride, essentially dropping off what one doesn't need right where another can use it?

That's the idea behind a Thermal Microgrid, and it's the subject of a recent paper that has won the ASHRAE Best Paper Award at the 2026 Annual Conference. The paper, "From Theory to Practice: Feasibility Study of a Thermal Microgrid at a US DoD Installation," was led by RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze in collaboration with researchers at the National Laboratory of the Rockies and the US Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory. It was presented at the ASHRAE Annual Meeting in Atlanta in September 2025.

How it works

A Thermal Microgrid is, at its core, a network of pipes carrying water at near-ambient temperature between buildings. Instead of every building running its own heating and cooling systems in isolation, each connected building gets a compact, efficient water-source heat pump in place of conventional HVAC equipment. A building that needs to shed heat, such as like a gym, a data center, or a kitchen, can pass that heat directly to a neighboring building that needs it, rather than rejecting it to the outside air and then burning more energy somewhere else to make heat from scratch.

The result, according to the study: a 31% reduction in source energy use, roughly a third less energy consumed to heat and cool the same set of buildings.

Why a military base, and why it matters beyond one

The study specifically models feasibility at a US Department of Defense installation. Military bases are effectively self-contained microgrids already, with their own generation, distribution, and a mandate for energy resilience and security that goes beyond simple cost savings. Demonstrating a Thermal Microgrid on a base means proving it somewhere the stakes for reliability are highest, and where the case for reducing energy demand ties directly to operational security, not just utility bills.

The implications reach well past DoD. The same logic applies to any dense cluster of buildings with mismatched heating and cooling needs, such as university campuses, hospital complexes, and commercial building districts.

The data center connection

A current application of this concept is with data centers, which are drawing an increasing share of national attention, and national grid capacity, for their energy demand. Data centers generate enormous, near-constant waste heat as a byproduct of computing. Rather than treating that heat purely as a cooling problem to be discarded, a Thermal Microgrid offers a way to treat it as a resource: piping it to nearby buildings that need warmth, and cutting the total energy draw of the district as a whole. As data center construction increases, pairing new facilities with thermal-sharing infrastructure could turn one of the grid's fastest-growing loads into a source of heating for its neighbors.

Why now?

This year's record-breaking summer temperatures have pushed cooling demand, and grid strain, to new highs in many parts of the country. A 31% reduction in source energy use at the building-district scale is exactly the kind of solution that eases pressure on the grid during peak demand, while lowering costs for the buildings involved.

Congratulations to the whole team on this recognition!

JUNE 2026

Off

Traditional

White

CHOISE Scientific Collaboration Awarded the 2026 Royal Society of Chemistry Faraday Horizon Prize

Daniel Morton — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:41:23 +0000

CHOISE Scientific Collaboration Awarded the 2026 Royal Society of Chemistry Faraday Horizon Prize Daniel Morton Tue, 06/23/2026 - 18:41

Daniel Morton

The Center for Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy (CHOISE) has been awarded the 2026 Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Faraday Horizon Prize, in recognition of its creation of a new class of chiral semiconductors that unify the control of spin, charge, and light within a single electronically active material platform.

CHOISE is a Department of Energy-funded Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) bringing together 17 research groups from nine institutions: the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), Duke University, the ��ñ��, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, San Diego State University, the University of Toledo, the University of Utah, and the University of California Santa Cruz. The Center includes seven RASEI Fellows, and is led by Fellow Matt Beard of NLR.

RASEI Fellows Kirstin Alberi (NLR), Steve Barlow (��ñ��), Joseph Berry (NLR), Jeff Blackburn (NLR), Joseph Luther (NLR), and Seth Marder (��ñ��) are all part of the collaboration.

The RSC Faraday Horizon Prize is awarded annually in recognition of significant recent discoveries and advances in physical chemistry. In selecting CHOISE, the prize committee highlighted both the scientific excellence and the collaborative character of the work, recognizing how the team has come together across disciplines and institutions to develop innovative ideas.

At the heart of CHOISE's prize-winning research is chirality, the property by which molecules exist in distinct left- and right-handed forms. By embedding chirality directly into a semiconductor, the team has demonstrated that molecular handedness can govern the behavior of charge carriers and their spin. This establishes a fundamentally new paradigm for spin-dependent optoelectronics: technologies that use both light and electrical signals to process and transmit information.

Optoelectronic devices already underpin much of modern life, from the fiber-optic networks that carry global internet traffic, to the sensors in medical imaging, and the LEDs and lasers in everyday electronics. However, the next generation of technologies, including applications such as quantum computing, ultra-secure communications, and energy-efficient data processing, will demand far greater control over the quantum properties of electrons, particularly their spin. Conventional semiconductors offer limited means to achieve this. This is where this work comes in. CHOISE's chiral semiconductor platform opens a new route to that control, using the inherent geometry of molecules rather than complex external hardware to influence the properties of the signal. This could ultimately lead to devices that are not only more powerful, but significantly more energy-efficient.

JUNE 2026

Off

Traditional

White

2026 Three Minute Thesis Finalists

Daniel Morton — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 20:57:33 +0000

2026 Three Minute Thesis Finalists Daniel Morton Tue, 02/24/2026 - 13:57

Daniel Morton

Find out more

��ñ�� 3MT Competition

2026 3MT Announcement

Recording of 2026 3MT Final

Meet 3MT Finalist Ben Hammel

Ben Hammel, a graduate student in the Dukovic Group, was a finalist in the 2026 ��ñ�� Three Minute Thesis Competition. We caught up with Ben to find out more about the whole 3MT process.

What is 3MT?

3MT stands for Three-Minute Thesis, which was a competition started at the University of Queensland. I think the history behind it is that they were going through droughts in Australia and everyone had these three-minute egg timers in their showers to limit water usage. Someone had this idea of maybe this was a good challenge for condensing/communicating your research: how well can you present your thesis in three minutes?

What did you have to do?

I came into this wanting to learn how to clearly describe my research. The rubric is really about explaining your science. They look at clarity, your enthusiasm, and about the slide and presentation. But they also look at can you describe the motivation of your research? Can you describe the design of your research? Can you describe the conclusions and societal impact of your work? So it is about science communication, with a strong grounding in the scientific aspects. Going through this process and thinking through these things has given me a better understanding of my own science.

Can you describe your research in five words?

Using microscope to look at nanocrystals. Six, that is ok, right?

What drew you to do the 3MT?

I wanted to improve my scientific communication skills, and I felt like there was something really cool about my research that I wanted to share. It is this simple idea that we need to look at nanocrystals to understand how they work. I get to use this amazing microscope to do just that!

What was the best part of the 3MT program?

The best part was definitely the cohort of talks. In the final competition folks got to see eleven presentations from across the graduate school, and that was awesome, but in the preliminary round there were more than 25. There were so many great talks from so many parts of the school that I got to see. It was really fun. You get to see in an hour so much condensed scientific knowledge. That was definitely the best part.

What was the worst/hardest part of the 3MT program?

The hardest part was talking about the science. It is so easy for me to say “we study these nanocrystals, and they’re cool, and I use this microscope”, but when people really ask me about what are the scientific questions you have and what are the experiments you run to answer them? And how are you going to engineer nanocrystals? It’s difficult to answer these kinds of technical questions in an accessible way.

How do you think your experience in 3MT will help you in the future?

Oh, it’s already helping me! Just in the way I talk to people and explain things. I feel like it has made me intellectually stronger and I am already noticing that it helps me communicate more clearly and think about my research in different ways.

What would you say to a grad student considering doing 3MT in the future?

Strongly recommend. It will take up a decent amount of your time, but it is definitely worth it. Don’t be afraid to tackle hard scientific concepts! One thing I regret not doing more of is really trying hard to tackle quantum mechanics in my talk. The properties of quantum dots are derived from quantum mechanics and I was scared to try to explain that, and I made my explanation totally classical. I was describing electricity flowing through crystals, but I think that people were hungry to learn more about the deeper science, and I should have given it a shot, at least to practice it and see if I could do it.

February 2026

Off

Traditional

White

RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze selected as 2026 ASHRAE Fellow

Daniel Morton — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 18:32:48 +0000

RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze selected as 2026 ASHRAE Fellow Daniel Morton Wed, 02/11/2026 - 11:32

Find out more

ASHRAE

ASHRAE 2026 Press Release

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, or ASHRAE, is dedicated to advancing human well-being through sustainable technology for the built environment. Founding in 1959 through the merger of professional societies dating back to 1894, ASHRAE members focus on building systems, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, refrigeration and sustainability within the industry.

Each year ASHRAE recognizes and celebrates the contributions of its outstanding members, highlighting their work and significant contributions to the field. This year RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze was selected to the 2026 cohort of 24 ASHRAE Fellows. The status of Fellow recognizes members who have attained distinction and made substantial contributions such as education, engineering design and consultation, publications, presentations and mentoring.

Congratulations Gregor!

February 2026

Off

Traditional

White

RASEI Fellow Kat Knauer selected as a 2026 Gilbreth Lecturer

Daniel Morton — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:36:05 +0000

RASEI Fellow Kat Knauer selected as a 2026 Gilbreth Lecturer Daniel Morton Wed, 01/28/2026 - 09:36

Daniel Morton

The Gilbreth Lectures recognize early-career engineers and provides a platform to share their work broadly with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Community.

The Gilbreth lectures were established in 2001 by the Council of the National Academy of Engineering as a means of recognizing outstanding young American engineers and making them more visible to NAE members. Recipients of the lectureships are nominated from The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering program and are given the opportunity to make presentations at the NAE’s fall Annual Meetings and spring National Meetings.

The Gilbreth Lectureships are named in honor of Lillian Gilbreth, the first woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1965. Lillian was a pioneer in the field of Human Factors, often considered to be the first industrial/organizational psychologist, whose research helped industrial engineers recognize the importance of the psychological dimensions of work.

Kat’s selection was based on her talk at the U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium on “AI-Driven Plastic Redesign for Recyclable Materials”. Congratulations to Kat, and we look forward to hearing about the presentations!

January 2026

Off

Traditional

White

��ñ�� Faculty Leadership Institute welcomes RASEI Fellow to 2025 Cohort

Daniel Morton — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 18:07:13 +0000

��ñ�� Faculty Leadership Institute welcomes RASEI Fellow to 2025 Cohort Daniel Morton Thu, 09/11/2025 - 12:07

Daniel Morton

RASEI Fellow Srinivas Parinandi has been selected, along with 14 others, as a member of the 2025 Cohort of the ��ñ�� Faculty Leadership Institute.

The ��ñ�� Faculty Affairs Institute, (FLI), established in 2013, is a program that helps identify, foster, and support emerging leaders as they prepare to further their leadership trajectory. Now with over 150 Fellows, each cohort (typically ~12-15 members each year), has the opportunity to engage with campus leaders in targeted discussions around current campus issues and build leadership skills. Monthly meetings throughout the academic year provide focus on two main areas of impact:

Meetings with campus leadership
Leadership skill development

This year RASEI Fellow Srinivas (Chinnu) Parinandi was selected to the cohort. Srinivas is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at ��ñ��. Research in the team explores American Political Institutions with a focus on two main areas; how the design of regulation influences policy outcomes; and how institutional characteristics condition the spread, or diffusion, of policy. The primary emphasis of his work looks at energy and economic policy.

September 2025

Off

Traditional

White

RASEI Fellow Bri-Mathias Hodge selected as member of the 25th Excellence in Leadership Cohort

Daniel Morton — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 17:49:27 +0000

RASEI Fellow Bri-Mathias Hodge selected as member of the 25th Excellence in Leadership Cohort Daniel Morton Wed, 08/27/2025 - 11:49

August 2025

Off

Traditional

White

Recognition

128th Distinguished Research Lectureship: Michael McGehee

Off

Interdisciplinary team takes on Colorado’s geothermal puzzle

Off

��ñ����’s “Frozen Air” window material wins gold in R&D 100 Green Tech Awards

Off

Cutting Building Energy Use by a Third, One Neighborhood at a Time

How it works

Why a military base, and why it matters beyond one

The data center connection

Why now?

Off

CHOISE Scientific Collaboration Awarded the 2026 Royal Society of Chemistry Faraday Horizon Prize

Off

2026 Three Minute Thesis Finalists

What is 3MT?

What did you have to do?

Can you describe your research in five words?

What drew you to do the 3MT?

What was the best part of the 3MT program?

What was the worst/hardest part of the 3MT program?

How do you think your experience in 3MT will help you in the future?

What would you say to a grad student considering doing 3MT in the future?

Off

RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze selected as 2026 ASHRAE Fellow

Off

RASEI Fellow Kat Knauer selected as a 2026 Gilbreth Lecturer

Off

��ñ���� Faculty Leadership Institute welcomes RASEI Fellow to 2025 Cohort

Off

RASEI Fellow Bri-Mathias Hodge selected as member of the 25th Excellence in Leadership Cohort

Off

��ñ��’s “Frozen Air” window material wins gold in R&D 100 Green Tech Awards

��ñ�� Faculty Leadership Institute welcomes RASEI Fellow to 2025 Cohort