UW-Madison Assistant Professor Trisha Andrew was recently named one of 18 young scientists in the nation to receive a grant worth $875,000 from the Packard Fellowship Program for her work on paper solar cells.
The Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering is a foundation that provides funding to the nation’s most promising young scientists so they can conduct research that they would not otherwise be able to do. Andrew’s grant will be disbursed over five years so that she can conduct more research about solar cells.
Andrew’s solar cell work proved promising in significantly reducing power consumption as well as enhancing storage and data capacities in new electronics. She does this by changing the spin and charge of electrons in solar cells using organic magnets and then prints the cells onto paper.
Currently, Andrew’s research is the only of its kind in the field.
