Süleyman Er third YES! Fellow FOM
The Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter has awarded a Young Energy Scientist (YES!) Fellowship to Dr. Süleyman Er. The former FOM PhD student will spend the next four years looking for a new class of solar cell components that can convert sunlight into electricity more efficiently and at a low cost. With a YES! Fellowship, FOM gives young researchers the chance to develop themselves at a top foreign institute in fundamental energy research. "Together with a team of scientists at Harvard University, I am going to screen molecular libraries and select the most promising molecules. Using these candidate molecules, we aim to design innovative structural motifs for the next generation of solar cells" adds Süleyman Er enthusiastically.
Computing
Conversion of sunlight into electricity requires efficient and affordable solar cells. "Our plan is to study the physical mechanisms of solar energy absorption and conversion in a large number of organic and metal-organic nanosystems. This is to be accomplished with the use of state-of-the-art scientific computing technologies and the world’s largest computing grid, IBM’s World Community Grid. Such an immense computing power will enable us to study the crucial electronic and optical properties of millions of molecules and polymers; many more than that could ever be tested in an actual device lab" explains Süleyman Er. The scientists hope that this will lead to the identification of the most promising molecules and polymers for developing affordable solar energy technologies with superb efficiencies.
YES! Fellowships
Er is the third YES! Fellow at FOM, after dr. Joep Pijpers and Andrea Baldi. YES! Fellowships have been designed to facilitate energy research in the Netherlands. After a maximum stay of three years abroad, the researchers return with the knowledge acquired to the Netherlands. They then have a year to embed the knowledge here and to lay the foundations for new lines of research and a scientific career in the Netherlands.
Further information
About the research of Süleyman Er:
http://aspuru.chem.harvard.edu/Research/Clean_Energy_Project/
http://cleanenergy.harvard.edu/
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/
About the YES! Fellowships of FOM:
www.fom.nl/energy
Jasper Reijnders, +31 (0)30 600 12 17