“If you solve the energy crisis, you impact everything.”

A key priority of the Grand Technion Energy Program is to attract first-rate new faculty members in energy-related fields, with state-of-the-art research facilities and conditions that make Technion a first choice research location for excellent scholars.

The Technion’s exceptionally close contacts with Israel’s flourishing high-tech industries mean that new discoveries and technologies can be rapidly translated into products and techniques that will improve the quality of life worldwide. This is a major incentive to researchers who are motivated by the desire to make the world a cleaner, safer, healthier place. 

Meet some of the new energy pioneers of the rising generation!

Nano Power

Assistant Prof. Lilac Amirav, Faculty of Chemistry

“If you just think about the problems that we have to face as humankind over the next 25 years and make a list – you will talk about war, hunger, pollution, clean water, energy,” says GTEP new recruit Assistant Professor Lilac Amirav, of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry. “Of all these things, energy is probably the most important – because if you solve the energy crisis, you impact everything.”

A key opening to discovering energy solutions, says Amirav, comes from the recent ability to manipulate the properties of matter at the Nano scale. “In colloidal photosynthesis, we can control the size of the particles – and that is a key that means we can tune most of the nanoparticle properties, for example its band gap. We are reaching that point where we can create almost everything that we can draw on paper – it’s pretty remarkable. It opens the doors of creativity, and it also means we can stop playing and actually design something for a particular task. We are now trying to create materials that will translate sun energy into chemical reaction – direct solar-to-fuel conversions.”

A member of the national I-CORE for Solar Fuels research team orchestrated by GTEP, Amirav finished her first degree when she was only 18. She returns to Technion from Berkeley in the US and is presently setting up her multidisciplinary lab.

 

Thermoelectric Economy

Assistant Prof. Yaron Amouyal, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Research into thermoelectrics could increase the heat-to-electricity energy conversion efficiency of a car or other energy consuming devices by as much as fifty percent.

From the atom probe through to advanced research involving experimental and computational materials physics, GTEP new recruit Assistant Prof. Yaron Amouyal is seeking to take the waste out of conventional energy systems. In 2010 he was attracted to the Technion from Northwestern University. He is now one of a small number of Israeli researchers at the cutting edge of thermoelectric materials and atom-probe tomography (APT). His ambition is to expand the field at Technion with the organization of unique state-of-the-art equipment.

“My intention is to build a new research area at Technion that applies the combination of high resolution characterization techniques with computational physics,” says Amouyal. “The main focus is to make petrol driven cars more efficient. BMW is working on this, as is General Motors. Wherever you have a heat source, you can do it… This application involves covering the hot parts of the engine such as the radiator or catalyser, and capturing the waste heat to convert to electricity.”

Yet the same energy science could also have a significant impact in the world of medicine. Cardiac pacemakers have batteries which wear out, explains Amouyal, and replacing them involves surgery. “Since 2009, there has been a new idea to take a thermoelectric device and – by exploiting the temperature difference between the human body and the surroundings – to capture a small amount of voltage that could be adequate to keep the pacemaker going.”

Amouyal says the Grand Technion Energy Program brings a platform for a great level of interaction between scientists. “As scientists, we don’t always have the last word on global issues,” he says. “My ambition is to reveal something new.”

 

Fluidic Impact

Assistant Prof. Moran Bercovici, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

“I tell my students that there are three big problems facing our generation,” says GTEP new recruit at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Assistant Prof. Moran Bercovici. “Environmental problems, including clean water supplies; energy sources – to be sustainable; and the prevention and control of disease. Many of these problems are ones which we created in the past 100 years. and now have to fix. Luckily, we now have more knowledge and capabilities than ever to actually do something about it. But I believe solutions no longer lie just with one field or discipline, We really have to be multidisciplinary, and bring together all fields of science, because the solutions are at the interface between disciplines.”

Bercovici is presently setting up The Microfluidic Technologies Laboratory at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering where his team combines experimental, analytical, and computational tools to study flow and transport at the microscale, typically characterized by strong coupling between fluid mechanics, heat transfer, electric fields, chemical reactions, and biological processes.

Aiming at bringing both depth and multidisciplinary breadth to his research and teaching, Dr. Bercovici started a new graduate class on microscale transport, and was selected as a Technion Outstanding Teacher for the Spring semester of 2012. He was recently elected as a Horev Fellow of Technion’s Leaders in Science and Technology program.

 

Sunlight Reclaimed

Assistant Prof. Carmel Rotschild, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

GTEP new recruit, Assistant Prof. Carmel Rotschild – who arrived in August 2011 at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering from M.I.T., is aiming to increase the efficiency of photovoltaics by around 20 percent, by developing efficient appliances to convert the lost rays of the sun that silicon is unable to process.

This involves the fusion (or up conversion) of infrared solar radiation to make that power accessible to silicon, and the fission (or down conversion) of radiation in the blue range to near infrared radiation, which could double their quantum efficiency in photovoltaics. The highly multidisciplinary approach includes the design and fabrication of nano-scale optical materials within an optical cavity, and Rotschild and his multidisciplinary team draws on expertise in nonlinear optics, material engineering, and energy transfer in molecules.