Daniel Nocera
PopTech 2009
Can we power the earth cheaply? That’s the question that has propelled Daniel Nocera to the forefront of green energy research. In 2007 he and his research team at MIT declared that a better understanding of photosynthesis—the process by which plants, with the help of sunlight, convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds—could point the way toward cleaner, more economical fuel storage.
“The whole energy problem is a bond rearrangement problem,” Nocera told The Guardian newspaper in 2008. Cutting the tie between energy use and carbon dioxide, he maintains, will be at the heart of any viable alternative to our dependence on coal, oil, and gas. Nocera also serves as the director of the Solar Revolution Project, which seeks to create solar energy innovations in large-scale, mainstream applications. He is presently the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry at MIT.
mit.edu/~chemistry/faculty/nocera.html
Watch Dan Nocera’s talk at Poptech 2009