Senior Sustainability Scientist Meng Tao has been selected as the 2017 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Alternative Energy Technology. Tao will take his solar energy expertise to Sweden, where he will work at the Chalmers University of Technology for the 2017–2018 academic year.

In Sweden, Tao will focus his research on charging electric vehicles with solar energy and on value-added recycling for solar modules.

“Charging electric vehicles by solar electricity makes environmental sense, but it is still expensive and unreliable,” Tao says. “That’s why we are developing a new solar photovoltaic system for charging electric vehicles that reduces the cost of solar electricity by 30 percent while eliminating its intermittency."