Joaquín Rodríguez-López, 35
Electrochemistry
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Joaquín Rodríguez-López was jolted into the world of electrochemistry. When he realized in college that he could hook up a machine to some wires and transform chemicals into energy, he was “completely sold,” he says.
Today, he’s tackling one big obstacle to expanding affordable renewable energy on the U.S. electrical grid: storage. The flow batteries that store large amounts of energy generated by wind and solar power need to more efficiently hold that energy for times when the sun isn’t shining or the breeze dies down.
In his laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Rodríguez-López, 35, has designed a new type of material to store electric charge in these batteries, making them more efficient. And he’s not stopping there. “We design new ways of looking at materials, and we design better materials,” he says.