Jeff Koplow has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the Innovator in Residence Fellowship by the SunShot Initiative, a DOE enterprise to make solar energy fully cost-competitive with traditional energy sources by 2020.

Jeff and his team will apply a multidisciplinary problem-solving approach that they have successfully applied to many other innovation challenges in technology areas relevant to DOE’s SunShot Initiative.

The new program, launched Oct. 1, will provide Jeff and his team $500,000 per year over three years to support the SunShot Initiative’s goals.

“We are very honored by this award and very motivated to make an impact,” says Jeff. “Sandia is a great place to undertake multidisciplinary innovation because of all the world-class subject matter expertise we have on hand. These resources will be used in conjunction with guidance from DOE SunShot leadership to target longstanding objectives in solar energy.”

4 R&D 100 awards

Jeff has demonstrated his forward thinking on energy problems with several inventions, including the Sandia Cooler, a breakthrough technology for air-cooled heat exchangers, and Twistact, a fundamentally new concept that enables novel wind turbine designs that eliminate rare-earth materials and high-maintenance components.

He is the recipient of four R&D 100 Awards, currently has 10 active licenses on previous inventions, and has given several invited talks on the subject of multidisciplinary technical innovation.

Lidija Sekaric, acting director of DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office, said, “We credit SunShot’s progress to date to the many creative researchers working on SunShot projects across private industry, academia, and the national labs. Through the Innovator in Residence Fellowship, Dr. Jeff Koplow and his proven team will provide us yet another tool for solving some of the critical issues that still face solar energy.”

Jeff received his B.A. in Chemistry from Reed College and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University.