Contributor Vivek Kemp is GE’s Reporter at Large
Our ongoing “GE Genius Series” is all about meeting the people in GE’s labs who are driving the next big breakthroughs. In our first two installments, Radislav Potyrailo revealed how butterfly wings are fanning his nanotechnology research and Anil Duggal lit the path to a future of bendable OLEDs that will one day fill your home with wallpaper lights. Today we meet Danielle Merfeld, who heads up solar technology programs at GE Global Research’s lab in Niskayuna, New York. Like her colleague Anil, Danielle thinks thin when it comes to letting the sunshine in. “The biggest next step is going to be when you start putting thin [solar panel] films around a flexible substrate that can be wrapped around things,” she says in the audio slideshow below. “They can conform to a roof, or hung like sails. Not only are they very light, and hopefully very inexpensive to produce, they’re also more architecturally interesting and you can do a lot more with them than you can with a rigid panel of any size.”
Meet the other scientists in our “GE Genius” series:
* “Part 2: Thin is in with OLEDs”
* “Part 1: Breakthroughs from butterflies”
* Learn more about our research labs in these GE Reports stories and videos
* Learn more about Danielle’s work on the GE Global Research blog
* Read about Danielle being featured as the “EcoGeek of the Week” on ecogeek.org