Energy for the 21’st Century

The conference was held at the La Fonda Hotel in the Santa Fe plaza on May 18-22, 2009, Santa Fe, NM. NM Tech graduate student Premchendar Nandhikonda and NM Tech Prof. Michael Heagy attended the meeting for both the invited speaker presentation and the poster session. During the meeting, Prof. Heady made several useful contacts in particular with invited speaker, Dr. Richard Sayer at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO. His work involved Microalgal Biofuels, a systems approach and in particular the use of organic dyes to optimize the amount of visible light by waveshifting either ultra-violet to blue light or green light to red. Since microalgae reflect green light, the strategy implemented here involves converting the incoming light to wavelengths other than green. The goal is to establish a collaboration with the Missouri group and utilize some of NMT's expertise in the field of fluorescent dyes for solar cells. In addition to the talks, the poster was well received and sparked a number of conversations with the attendees. The poster also represents work that has been submitted as a full article to the Journal of Organic Chemistry.

Contact: Prof. Michael Heagy, mheagy@nmt.edu