Arunava Majumdar

Options to Decarbonize our Energy System
Arunava Majumdar
Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford

Abstract:
How can we decarbonize our energy system and continue our economic growth? This is a fundamental question that the world is trying to address, and it is difficult to do so because almost our entire global economic growth over the last 250 years is based on the use of fossil fuels. Achieving this transition cost effectively and with security will undoubtedly require innovations. This talk will discuss a variety of unmistakable techno-economic trends in energy, identify key gaps that require research in science and engineering to address, and offer technological options for the industry to adopt and scale to make substantive impact on decarbonizing our energy system.

Bio:
Arun Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Professor at Stanford University, a faculty member of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and co-director of the Precourt Institute for Energy.
Arun’s research in the past has involved the science and engineering of nanoscale materials and devices, especially in the areas of energy conversion, transport and storage as well as biomolecular analysis. His current research focuses on using electrochemical reactions for thermal energy conversion, thermochemical water splitting reactions to produce carbon-free hydrogen, understanding the limits of heat transport in nanostructured materials and a new effort to re-engineer the electricity grid.
In October 2009, President Obama nominated Arun and the Senate confirmed him as the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, where he served until June 2012. Between March 2011 and June 2012, Arun was also the acting under secretary of energy and a senior advisor to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.
After leaving Washington, DC and before joining Stanford, Arun was the vice president for energy at Google, where he created several energy technology initiatives, especially on the electricity grid, and advised the company on its broader energy strategy.
Prior to joining the Department of Energy, Arun was the Almy & Agnes Maynard Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at University of California–Berkeley and the associate laboratory director for energy and environment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Arun currently serves on the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s advisory board, the councils of the National Academy of Engineering and the Electric Power Research Institute, the science policy boards of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is a member of the international advisory panel for energy of the Singapore Ministry of Trade & Industry and the U.S. delegation for the U.S. –India Track II dialogue on climate change and energy. The U.S. State Department recently appointed him as a U.S. science envoy with an emphasis on energy and innovation in Poland and the Baltic region.
Arun is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the Indian Institute of Technology–Bombay in 1985 and his Ph.D. from U.C.–Berkeley in 1989, both in mechanical engineering.