Cafe Scientifique event featuring Prof. Paul Alivisatos on Nanotechnology and Renewable Energy in Menlo Park

Cafe Scientifique event featuring Prof. Paul Alivisatos on Nanotechnology and Renewable Energy

The Tuesday, August 8 meeting of Cafe Scientifique will be held at the U. S. Geological Survey Auditorium, 345 Middlefield Road, in Menlo Park from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The meeting will feature Prof. Paul Alivisatos of UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who will discuss Nanotechnology and Renewable Energy (see below). We are grateful that the U. S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park is making its auditorium available for this event. Important information on the location follows.

U.S. Geological Survey

345 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, Building 3, Upstairs Auditorium

Enter the campus at Survey Lane; Building 3 is the second building on the right. It has a flagpole in front of it. You are welcome to park your car or bicycle in any lot on the USGS campus.

As no food and beverages will be available for sale, you are welcome to bring your own snacks and non-alcoholic beverages -- bring enough to share if you'd like. Cafe Sci participants are responsible for leaving the auditorium in excellent condition. The auditorium comfortably seats approximately 190 people, but note that there are no tables in the room.

Café Scientifique events are open to all free of charge. No reservations are necessary. For more information please visit our web site: http://www.cafescipa.org. Feel free to forward this announcement to interested friends and colleagues. Sign up here to be notified of future Cafe Scientifique events, which will be organized when we secure a permanent meeting location.

Sponsored by Roxro Pharma, Café Scientifique is a place where anyone can come to explore the latest ideas in science and technology and debate science issues outside a traditional academic context. Feel free to forward this message to anyone you think could be interested.

Professor Alivisatos's research focuses on the structural, thermodynamic, optical, and electrical properties of colloidal inorganic nanocrystals. He investigates the fundamental physical and chemical properties of nanocrystals and also works to develop practical applications of these new materials in biomedicine and renewable energy. He believes that one of the most important applications of nanotechnology will be in the area of renewable energy. As scientists today confront the problem of how to harvest the energy of sunlight, there is increasing interest in learning how to emulate the nanoscale structures of light-harvesting systems in plants. Such advanced applications of nanotechnology may yield robust, efficient, and scalable renewable energy systems in the future. Alivisatos is a senior member of the technical staff at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he has been appointed Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences and where he also serves as Director of the Materials Sciences Division. He is the Editor of the American Chemical Society Journal Nano Letters.

Categories: Science | Technology