Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI)

10/29/2026

Infrastructure and the built environment not only need to be resilient in a wide range of environments and climates, but also need to do it in an affordable and energy efficient way.

This fall RASEI worked with the Sustainability Research Initiative and the Climate and Innovation Collaboratory to host the 2026 Conference on InfrastRucture Resilience and SUStainability, or CIRRUS.

This one day conference hosted a wide range of local experts to facilitate discussions about the impacts of climate extremes on the built environment and infrastructure, focused on leveraging the latest research to promote resilience and sustainability.

Find out more about the agenda details and event here:
https://www.colorado.edu/rasei/2026/10/29/2026-conference-infrastructure-resilience-and-sustainability

10/20/2026

Congratulations to RASEI Fellow Steven Spurgeon, a Senior Materials Data Scientist at the National Laboratory of the Rockies, who has been named a 2026 Fellow of the American Physical Society! Only a tiny fraction of APS members receive this honor each year.

Spurgeon's team uses artificial intelligence to help scientific instruments analyze data and make decisions on the fly, accelerating the search for new materials for energy and computing.

Learn more: https://www.colorado.edu/rasei/2026/10/20/rasei-fellow-steven-spurgeon-named-2026-american-physical-society-fellow

10/15/2026

RASEI Fellow Mike McGehee has been selected as the 128th Distinguished Research Lecturer. His talk will be on Wednesday November 18th at 4:00 PM in the CASE Auditorium.

Among the most esteemed honors bestowed by the faculty upon CU Boulder Faculty members, the Distinguished Research Lectureship recognizes outstanding contributions to researcher, scholarship, and creative work.

The title of the talk will be “Harnessing Sunlight and Mentoring Startup Founders to Address Climate Change”. McGehee built his research group with a mission to pattern materials at the smallest length scales to address one of humanity’s biggest challenges: Global Climate Change.

This talk will revolve around two key inventions and the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that has been foundational to the research approach fostered in his group.

Check out this feature on Mike and make a plan to attend the talk!

OCTOBER 2026

10/07/2026

For all CU Boulder Postdocs - the Postdoctoral Association of Colorado Boulder (PAC Boulder) are offering three awards to support your professional development!

Applications can be submitted between 10/01/2026 - 11/15/2026 at the link below.

Applications will undergo a blind review and assessed based on three criteria: Individual career development, intellectual merit, and broader impact. Applicants will be notified of the outcome within 10 days of the deadline.

Apply now!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfjnodGCJ4J8VTxfL3jCDWOivTTXY1U1_kGzw4PHlNludMHJg/viewform

10/01/2026

You See Muck. I See the Most Beautiful Places on Earth.

Bogs are some of the strangest, and most important landscapes on the planet. While peatlands occupy only a small fraction of the world’s surface, they store an enormous share of the carbon held in global soils. They also act as a living archive. Their specialized ecology slows the decomposition of dead organic matter to a near halt, making them a rich store telling the story of how the world has changed.

Ahead of her upcoming book ‘Boglands’, RASEI Fellow Merritt Turetsky has a piece in today’s New York Times, that teases some of the weird and wonderful things she has encountered over three decades exploring these amazing landscapes. From making bog-angels to unusual discoveries in the muck, this teaser promises a wonderful story in the upcoming book.

Check out the Op-Ed below and make a date to find out more when the book is released.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/opinion/bogs-peatland-climate.html

08/06/2026

Could a simple ruler help design better solar materials?

New research from RASEI Fellow Alex Zunger says: maybe so.

Halide perovskites are a leading candidate for next-generation solar cells, but figuring out which atomic combinations make them stable and efficient usually takes expensive, time-consuming computer simulations.

Zunger's team found that two simple measurements of atomic structure, basically, how atoms are spaced and angled, can predict those same properties, no heavy computing required.

It's a simpler way to help researchers rapidly screen candidates to find the most promising materials for next-gen solar technology.

Read more:
https://www.colorado.edu/rasei/2026/08/06/simpler-ruler-complex-solar-material

08/03/2026

Think a wind turbine in Indiana and a solar panel in California are doing the same amount of good for environment? Think again.

New research from RASEI Fellow Dan Kaffine says: not quite.

It turns out a renewable energy source's real environmental value depends on what power plant it's replacing, and that changes a lot based on the time of day and where it's located. A turbine offsetting coal at night delivers a much bigger win than one competing with a glut of midday solar in California.

Not all clean megawatt-hours are equal, and energy policy should start reflecting that.

https://www.colorado.edu/rasei/2026/07/31/not-all-renewable-energy-created-equal

07/23/2026

Why do some solar cells wear out faster than others? Sometimes it comes down to the chemistry happening at the molecular scale.

RASEI Fellow Mike McGehee and a team of researchers from CU Boulder, Ted Sargent at Northwestern, Neal Armstrong at the University of Arizona, David Ginger at the University of Washington, and RASEI Fellow Joey Luther at the National Laboratory of the Rockies, dug into why perovskite solar cells degrade when part of a panel is shaded while the rest is in sunshine.

It turns out, hidden electrochemical reactions inside the cell create new charged ions that gradually break down its structure. The team also found a fix, making one of the cell's internal layers smoother and more uniform stops the gradual breakdown before it even starts.

It is a great example of how collaborative research enables the understanding of a technology's failure points, and how this can be just as important as improving its performance.

Check out the full story here: https://www.colorado.edu/rasei/2026/07/23/hidden-chemistry-inside-tomorrows-solar-cells

07/21/2026

Opening new pathways to light-driven chemistry

In a lot of the chemical reactions that build the molecules that make up medicines and materials we rely on, reactions are triggered by one molecule passing an electron using light instead of heat, making for a cleaner and more efficient reaction

For a long time only molecule "eager" to grab that electron got to join in, anything more 'reluctant' was left on the sidelines.

RASEI Fellow Niels Damrauer and collaborators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Colorado State University found a new way to approach this problem. Instead of focusing on which molecule grabs the electron first, they looked at what happen next, does it hang on to the electron, or give it back?

That shift in thinking changes everything about which molecules can participate in these reactions, opening the doors to reactions that were previous thought impossible.

Curious how it works? We broke it down in this highlight:
https://www.colorado.edu/rasei/2026/07/21/new-dial-controlling-light-driven-chemistry

07/02/2026

Imagine if the building next door could share its extra heat with you, instead of both of you running separate systems to solve opposite problems.

That's the concept behind a "Thermal Microgrid," and it's the subject of a paper that just won the ASHRAE Best Paper Award at the 2026 Annual Conference. Led by RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze, along with researchers at the National Laboratory of the Rockies and the US Army Corps of Engineers, the study found this approach could cut energy use by nearly a third at a US military installation, with potential applications on college campuses, hospital complexes, and even near data centers.

With this summer's record heat putting real strain on the grid, solutions like this one are worth paying attention to.

Read more about the award-winning research: https://www.colorado.edu/rasei/2026/06/28/cutting-building-energy-use-third-one-neighborhood-time

Congratulations to the whole research team! 👏