Michael Grätzel receives the Frontiers of Knowledge Award
The annual BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards cover eight categories, each awarded 400,000 euros. The categories span basic, natural, and social sciences and technology, climate change and ecology and conservation biology, contemporary music and opera. This year, the BBVA has included a new category for Humanities and Social Sciences.
Established in 2008, the Awards “recognize and reward contributions of singular impact in science, technology, social sciences and the humanities, privileging those that significantly expand the frontiers of the known world, open up new fields, or emerge from the interaction of various disciplinary areas.”
This year, the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Basic Sciences has gone to Professor Michael Grätzel at EPFL and Professor Paul Alivisatos at the University of California, Berkeley. The Award celebrates “their fundamental contributions to the development of new nanomaterials already in use for the production of renewable energies and in latest-generation electronics.”
The awarding committee’s citation reads: “Graetzel’s groundbreaking work includes the invention of a dye-sensitized solar cell named after him. Alivisatos made pioneering contributions in using semiconductor nanocrystals for energy and display applications. Their discoveries have found applications in renewable energy and optoelectronics.”