(zunger, alex - 2018) -- Karl W. Boer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Award
Overview
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Alex Zunger joins former President Jimmy Carter as a recipient of the biannual award. He is the 14th recipient of the award, which is given to those who, like its namesake, have made enduring contributions to the sustainable future of the planet. His pioneering work in condensed matter physics and the concept of inverse design has helped to develop a deep understanding of materials in general and complex solar materials in particular. Zunger has brought state-of-the-art quantum mechanical understanding of solids to photovoltaics. His contributions to the understanding of PV and electronic materials interfaces, nanostructure, and more, provide theory guidance to improve device performance. Among his many achievements, Zunger established the Solid State Theory group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. He has also been the founding director of the $20 million Center for Inverse Design, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. He is the author of the fifth-most-cited paper in the 110-year history of Physical Review, out of more than 350,000 articles published in that journal. In the course of his research, he has written more than 650 articles in refereed journals. The impact of his work is partially reflected by the high number of citations, more than 88,000, his papers have received.
