IGERT: The Solar Economy (SEIGERT)

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

The Solar Economy Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) project supports the development of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional graduate training program of education and research in a sustainable solar economy at the Purdue University in collaboration with University of Delaware, University of Texas at El Paso, Sandia National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Energy, Monash University and several industrial partners. We use the term "solar economy" to refer to a future state of affairs where nearly all the energy needed for electricity, transportation, heat, chemicals and food is based on sustainable supply of sunlight. To enable such a future state, this IGERT is primarily rooted in finding interdisciplinary technical solutions to the most important challenges of sun-to-electricity and sun-to-fuel within the context of harmonious coexistence with other uses of solar energy. In order to identify breakthrough technical solutions and gain a thorough insight into the complexity of a solar economy, a large number of interdisciplinary solutions will be generated and rapidly assessed for their system-wide impact. The IGERT establishes a new vision and program for integrating education and training that will reveal the complexity of this system to individuals from the diverse backgrounds necessary to address the future key energy challenges. The transition away from fossil fuels to a new solar economy necessitates major changes to the U.S. infrastructure and redefines the skill set required by our workforce. The IGERT program will address this need by developing lectures, course modules, training modules, and simulation tools that will define a new paradigm for interdisciplinary education and training in renewable energy. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.