Dr. Michael Machczynski and Dr. Jianfeng Jiang (left), assistant professors of chemistry at Yeshiva University, have each been awarded grants of $50,000 over two years from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund to investigate means of efficiently storing energy from the sun.

The professors’ complementary research projects involve the development of enzymes as catalysts to convert water to oxygen, which is necessary to store solar energy in a chemical form, such as hydrogen or methanol. The aim is to develop a cost-effective, renewable alternative to expensive platinum-based catalysts. Read more.