Finding the energy to power a civilization of about 10 billion people without destroying the environment is the greatest challenge facing humanity this century. Unlike many research opportunities, failure to solve this problem risks centuries of hardship for human civilization. Therefore, the work of Dr. Michael Aziz, of Harvard University, is of utmost importance.

The cost of solar and wind power has dropped so much that the greatest remaining obstacle to us getting the vast majority of our electricity from sunshine and wind is their intermittency. Dr. Aziz leads an interdisciplinary research team developing a promising battery storage technology for safely and cost-effectively storing enormous amounts of solar and wind-generated electricity. This will enable us to use them when we need them, rather than when Nature chooses to provide them. His team was recognized by Discover Magazine when their invention was listed among the top 100 stories of 2014. While massive worldwide deployment of clean energy technologies will take many decades, Dr. Aziz presses forward with the knowledge that, “if we wait to see how things go before really getting moving, we’re guaranteed to get there too late.”

    Dr. Aziz’s work aims for both near-term and long-term impact on the energy-environment problem. In addition to his work with battery storage science and technology, Dr. Aziz has begun to work on a variety of other projects that may reduce the burden being placed upon our planet while aiding humanity in meeting its needs. Through research on some of the greatest technical obstacles in renewable energy and sustainability today, Dr. Aziz aims to make important contributions to solving the energy-environment problem.

Current research includes:

• Battery Storage Technology: Dr. Aziz’s team is developing a battery storage technology in which energy is stored in inexpensive, abundant, non-toxic organic molecules found in nature. These are dissolved in water -- so they can’t catch fire -- and can be energized and then stored outside the battery container itself in arbitrarily large holding tanks for greatly reduced cost.

• Material Stability: Radiation tolerance is important for electrical power plants that produce power by nuclear fission, as well as for future plants envisaged to produce power by nuclear fusion -- which, unlike fission, creates no radioactive products. Currently the problem of stability of an irradiated solid is a very difficult one to solve. Dr. Aziz studies the way that energetic particle irradiation affects the surfaces of materials in order to develop a way to predict which materials will be stable under which irradiation conditions.

• New Semiconductors: Dr. Aziz is studying new semiconductors that can be made with ion bombardment and pulsed laser irradiation. These fabrication methods permit him and his team to make materials with atomic compositions that have not been made by any other method. They are studying and modifying these materials as possible candidates for ultra-high efficiency solar cells.

• Removing Carbon Dioxide: Dr. Aziz is investigating how carbon dioxide might be removed from the atmosphere through the development of industrial processes to accelerate the earth’s natural process -- called chemical weathering -- to industrial rates. Currently the technology cost is too high and the market price of carbon dioxide emissions is too low for this to be economically viable, but his research aims to reduce technology costs for earlier viability if market conditions change.