Solares Wins Department of Energy's Early Career Award

Santiago Solares

Clark School mechanical engineering professor Santiago Solares was selected to receive the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2012 Early Career Award for his research project “Trimodal Tapping Mode Atomic Force Microscopy: Simultaneous 4D Mapping of Conservative and Dissipative Probe-Sample Interactions of Energy-Relevant Materials.” Solares is the first faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering to receive the DOE’s Early Career Award, which is in its third year. Solares will receive $750,000 to fund his five-year project.

Solares was among 68 chosen for the award based on a peer review of about 850 proposals submitted by principal investigators who received a doctorate degree less than 10 years ago. The DOE provides awards in categories such as Basic Energy Sciences, for which Solares’s research was selected. The goal of this project, which Solares developed in collaboration with chemical engineering professor Chunsheng Wang, is to develop multidimensional force spectroscopy methods, which will be used to investigate the real-time degradation of fuel cell and battery materials. This understanding will be useful for the development of better performing materials and for extending the life of existing materials. For more information on Solares and his work, visit his faculty page. For more information on Chunsheng Wang and his work, visit his website.