GTEP ~ the Energy Core

Prof. Gideon Grader, director of the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP), was chosen to lead the Center of Excellence in Alternative Energies, as announced by the Council of Higher Education at the end of June 2011. This initiative, the fourth center to be named in the I-CORE (Israeli Centers of Research Excellence) framework, will incorporates 36 researchers at Technion, Weizmann Institute of Science, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).

GTEP together with Weizmann and BGU, combined efforts in a proposal for advanced research into solar fuels. This includes biomass generation; hydrogen production by water splitting; photo conversion of CO2 to CO; biomass conversion to ethanol and biodiesel; biomass gasification and catalytic fuel generation from H2, CO, CO2 and methanol.

The center, chosen by an international committee, is slated to enlist at least nine new researchers in the coming three years. Three new members, returning to Israel from Harvard and University of Michigan, will be recruited to Technion’s Faculty of Biology and Schulich Faculty of Chemistry this year.