Cuk

Careers in Renewable Energy Panel Discussion

Daniel Morton — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:06:41 +0000

Careers in Renewable Energy Panel Discussion Daniel Morton Thu, 04/02/2026 - 14:06

Daniel Morton

On April 1, 2026, the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), in partnership with Colorado Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy (WRISE), hosted a panel discussion exploring careers in the renewable energy sector. The event brought together students, researchers, and professionals interested in learning more about the range of opportunities available in this rapidly evolving field.

Colorado WRISE, a local chapter of a nationwide organization, works to accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy future by supporting the education, professional development, and advancement of women in renewable energy. In collaboration with RASEI, the event highlighted both the diversity of career pathways in the industry and the importance of building an inclusive and connected professional community.

The panel featured six professionals representing a wide cross-section of the renewable energy landscape. Panelists included Claire Behar (Foss & Company), Jan Coyle (Ulteig), Professor Tanja Cuk (CU Boulder), Melissa Funsten (Tract), Dr. Nicola Mendoza (Sunforged Solutions), and Terri Walters (CU Boulder). Their collective experience spanned industry, academia, policy, project development, and engineering, offering attendees a broad perspective on how different roles contribute to the clean energy transition.

The discussion began with each panelist sharing a brief overview of their background and career journey. A common theme that emerged was the variety of entry points into renewable energy. Some panelists described following more traditional academic or technical pathways, while others highlighted nonlinear routes that drew on transferable skills from other industries. This diversity of experiences underscored a key takeaway for attendees: there is no single path into the renewable energy sector.

Panelists also addressed the evolving nature of careers in sustainability and clean energy. As the industry continues to grow, so too does the demand for a wide range of skill sets, including engineering, policy, finance, project management, and community engagement. Several speakers emphasized that the energy transition is not only a technical challenge, but also a social and economic one, requiring collaboration across disciplines.

Another important theme was the value of adaptability and continuous learning. Panelists encouraged attendees to remain open to new opportunities, build interdisciplinary and interpersonal skills, and seek out experiences that broaden their understanding of the energy system as a whole. Whether through internships, research, or networking, early career exploration was highlighted as an important step in identifying areas of interest within the field.

Following the panel discussion, attendees had the opportunity to continue conversations during a casual networking session with light refreshments. This provided a valuable space for students and early-career professionals to connect, and to learn more about job and internship opportunities in the renewable energy sector.

Overall, the event provided stories and insights around careers in renewable energy, highlighting both the breadth of opportunities available and the many pathways into the field. By bringing together professionals from different sectors and stages of their careers, the panel provided attendees with a clearer understanding of how they might navigate their own career journeys in sustainability.

RASEI and Colorado WRISE look forward to hosting similar events in the future that continue to connect the campus and broader community with leaders in renewable energy and sustainability.

April 2026

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Surface Acidity of Oxygen Evolution Intermediates by Excited State Optical Spectroscopy

Daniel Morton — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:37:57 +0000

Surface Acidity of Oxygen Evolution Intermediates by Excited State Optical Spectroscopy Daniel Morton Mon, 07/28/2025 - 13:37

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, 2025, 147, 31, 28474-28483

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Assigning Surface Hole Polaron Configurations of Titanium Oxide Materials to Excited-State Optical Absorptions

Daniel Morton — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 20:18:55 +0000

Assigning Surface Hole Polaron Configurations of Titanium Oxide Materials to Excited-State Optical Absorptions Daniel Morton Tue, 03/04/2025 - 13:18

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, 2025, 147, 13, 10981-10991

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Do Small Hole Polarons Form in Bulk Rutile TiO2?

Daniel Morton — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 22:47:23 +0000

Do Small Hole Polarons Form in Bulk Rutile TiO2? Daniel Morton Mon, 02/24/2025 - 15:47

THE JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY LETTERS, 2025, 16, 9, 2333-2339

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Probing intermediate configurations of oxygen evolution catalysis across the light spectrum

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Probing intermediate configurations of oxygen evolution catalysis across the light spectrum Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/09/2024 - 00:00

Mapping a route for more efficient production of sustainable fuels

Read the Article

Find out more about CEDARS

This perspective article, led by RASEI Fellow Tanja Cuk, brings together researchers at six research institutions from across the United States, to describe how advances in spectroscopy and theory can map out the elementary details of the oxygen evolution reaction, a critical reaction to enable the production of fuels from sustainable energy sources.

The oxygen evolution reaction (or OER for short), is a critical step in the creation of sustainable, decarbonized fuels, such as hydrogen. Water (H₂O) can be split into hydrogen (H₂) and oxygen (O₂) using electricity. This process pulls apart strong chemical bonds – it takes a lot of energy! If we can better understand this process, we can make it more efficient, which will enable us to create clean fuels and store renewable energy, like solar and wind power, to smooth out variations in the supply. Specifically, the OER is the half-reaction that occurs at the anode (positive electrode) during electrolysis, in which the water molecules are oxidized to produce oxygen gas (O₂), protons (H⁺), and electrons. Though this sounds straightforward, the process involves multiple intermediates, or steps, many of which are currently poorly defined. Understanding this complex process requires a collaborative approach. Jin Suntivich (Cornell University) and Dhananjay Kumar (North Carolina A&T) bring expertise in making advanced materials and electrochemistry, Geoffroy Hautier (Dartmouth College) and Ismaila Dabo (Carnegie Mellon University) develop theoretical models, and Ethan Crumlin (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), Tanja Cuk (CU Boulder), and Jin Suntivich use X-ray and optical spectroscopy to visualize the small molecular intermediates.

Imagine that you have to drive from Denver, Colorado, to Greensboro, North Carolina. If someone gave you a map that only showed your starting location and destination, it would be quite difficult. You would know that you had to head east, but you wouldn’t know what roads to take, which were the fastest moving, or where any good stops were along the way. You could probably get there, but you would get lost a few times on the way, use some of the slow roads, and maybe be stuck staying in places you didn’t want to. It would be a very inefficient journey. Now compare this to using a modern navigation app, one that has details of every road along the way, the speed limits, the traffic levels, where all the gas stations are, the good restaurants and coffee shops, and good places to stop for the night. You would be far more efficient (and happy) using the navigation app.

It is the same with a chemical reaction. If you understand the elementary steps of a reaction, you can design a system that is more efficient and effective at getting to the final product. Creating this ‘map’ for the OER is a central mission of the Center for Electrochemical Dynamics and Reactions on Surfaces (CEDARS). CEDARS is a Department of Energy funded Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), that brings together twelve research groups at five universities and two DOE national labs across the chemical, materials, and computational sciences. CEDARS is headed by Director Dhananjay Kumar at North Carolina A&T, with a strong program in thin materials research. This is the first EFRC awarded to an HBCU as a lead institution in the country. There are several challenges that need to be overcome before the OER process can be scaled up. Currently OER is expensive, energy intensive and not reliable for continuous long-term operation. OER requires large inputs of electricity, the catalysts used in the reaction are based on scarce materials that are unstable under long-term exposure to the harsh conditions present in the OER process. By better understanding the elementary steps of the OER reaction researchers can design cheaper, more efficient processes.

RASEI Fellow, and Associate Director of CEDARS Tanja Cuk explains that there have been a series of proposed oxygen-related intermediates (e.g. OH*, O*, O-O), but it has been hard to capture experimental evidence for them and the elementary steps that create them. “The article is a perspective on how to get at the intermediates and their dynamics within the buried electrode-electrolyte interface. The approach involves model crystalline materials, targeted spectroscopies to isolate the intermediates, and theoretical investigations that predict how they appear in the electrochemistry and the spectroscopy. We also use materials that bind the intermediates at different strengths, so that they appear statically and transiently.” This fundamental and basic energy sciences approach combines expertise from across CEDARS bringing together computational theoretical modeling, materials synthesis, and spectroscopy. The diversity of institutions involved has already provided for many student and postdoctoral exchanges that further deepen the background of the team and broaden the scope of the research. Just last month the Center Director and his graduate student visited NREL and CU to test the samples made at NCAT.

Precise control of the materials under investigation is required for effective characterization and theoretical modeling. Dhananjay Kumar, Jin Suntivich, and collaborators within CEDARS use a process called epitaxial layer deposition, a procedure where a thin crystalline layer is grown on top of a substrate. For these investigations the epitaxial layers are the OER catalysts made from ruthenium and titanium oxides that are then tested electrochemically. Geoffroy Hautier is a materials theorist who uses computational models to calculate the structure and defects that intermediates create in the materials and their impacts on x-ray and optical spectra. Ismaila Dabo takes these configurations and creates a model of the electrical and water environment around the electrode interface, describing a more realistic environment for the OER processes. To provide a more detailed understanding, the theoretical models are tested and refined based on feedback from advanced spectroscopic observations. The spectroscopies highlight static spectra of intermediate coverages and transient intermediates during OER. Jin Suntivich brings expertise in combining in-situ electrochemistry with non-linear optical techniques; Ethan Crumlin develops in-situ and time-resolved x-ray spectroscopies; Tanja Cuk combines in-situ electrochemistry with ultrafast optical spectroscopy. Integrating the computational advances with the experimental observations provides a powerful toolkit. Accurate interpretation of the spectral observations relies on the findings from the computational techniques.

While the ‘map’ for the OER has not been solved, this interdisciplinary and fundamental approach to interrogating the OER process is providing invaluable insights into how different catalysts bind to the intermediates and how this impacts different reaction pathways. By characterizing the nature of the intermediates bound to the catalyst an understanding of their equilibrium behavior during the OER process can be developed. The CEDARS team are already thinking about next steps for this powerful approach. These include understanding the non-equilibrium dynamics of these intermediates by fully time resolved x-ray and optical probes and investigating more complex material structures. The observations from these ‘in-process’ reactions will help define the roadmap to a more efficient and cost-effective approach to generate clean fuels from renewable energy sources.

NATURE ENERGY, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01583-x

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Ultrafast Electronic and Vibrational Spectroscopy of Electrochemical Transformations on a Metal-Oxide Surface during Oxygen Evolution Catalysis

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Ultrafast Electronic and Vibrational Spectroscopy of Electrochemical Transformations on a Metal-Oxide Surface during Oxygen Evolution Catalysis Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/18/2024 - 00:00

ACS CATALYSIS, 2024, 14, 9901-9926

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Phenomenology of Intermediate Molecular Dynamics at Metal-Oxide Interfaces

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Phenomenology of Intermediate Molecular Dynamics at Metal-Oxide Interfaces Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 06/01/2024 - 00:00

ANNUAL REVIEW OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY, 2024, 75, 457-481

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Formation of the oxyl’s potential energy surface by the spectral kinetics of a vibrational mode

Anonymous — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Formation of the oxyl’s potential energy surface by the spectral kinetics of a vibrational mode Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/29/2024 - 00:00

THE JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS, 2024, 160, 164202

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Assessing and Quantifying Thermodynamically Concomitant Degradation during Oxygen Evolution from Water on SrTiO3

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Assessing and Quantifying Thermodynamically Concomitant Degradation during Oxygen Evolution from Water on SrTiO3 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/05/2023 - 00:00

ACS CATALYSIS, 2023, 13, 8206-8218

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Moderate Electron Doping Assists in Dissociating Water on a Transition Metal Oxide Surface (n-SrTiO3)

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Moderate Electron Doping Assists in Dissociating Water on a Transition Metal Oxide Surface (n-SrTiO3) Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/06/2023 - 00:00

JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C, 2023, 127, 10, 4905-4916

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