Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Award & Karl Böer Renewable Energy Mid-Career Award

This award, first presented in 1993, is presented for significant pioneering contributions to the promotion of solar energy as an alternative source of energy through research, development or economic enterprise; or extraordinary valuable and enduring contributions to the field of solar energy in other ways. The Karl W. Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Trust and the University of Dalaware manage this award. The award was presented in cooperation with ISES until 2018 and ISES still holds an active part in the awards committee.

Since 2022, two awards are being presented:

- the Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit

and

- the Karl Böer Renewable Energy Mid-Career Award

The medals are named in honor of Dr. Karl Wolfgang Böer, a trailblazing scientist in the field of renewable energy who founded the Institute of Energy Conversion (IEC) at the University of Delaware. Since its founding in 1972, IEC has been a leader in photovoltaic research. It is the oldest solar cell institution in the world and a U.S. Department of Energy-designated University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaic Research and Education.

2022 Recipient - Karl Böer Renewable Energy Mid-Career Award

Anke Weidenkaff, director of the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS and professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, was selected for the first Böer Renewable Energy Mid-Career Award, which carries a $25,000 prize. She was nominated by David Cahen, Professor Emeritus at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, for her "visionary leadership and work in renewable energy and sustainability technologies with pioneering contributions to materials for solar fuels, thermoelectric converters, catalysts and self-regenerative functions." In his nomination letter, Cahen said Weidenkaff is "one of the best and most interdisciplinary scientists in the field of solid-state materials working on renewable energy technologies, whose research not only demonstrates excellence and ingenuity, but also has an impact on society."

 

2022 Recipient - Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Mert

Vasilis Fthenakis , founding director of the Center for Life Cycle Analysis and adjunct professor of earth and environmental engineering and of electrical engineering, has won the 2022 Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit. The award, accompanied by a $100,000 prize, honors a world-renowned researcher who has made pioneering advancements in renewable energy as an alternative form of energy.

Fthenakis has helped resolve concerns for rapid growth commercialization through groundbreaking work on variable renewable energy systems integration and life cycle sustainability analysis. He primarily works to solve problems at the intersection of energy and the environment, by developing predictive models, control technologies, and methodologies. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the International Energy Agency, he has created and led multi-country collaborations.

Fthenakis founded Columbia’s Center for Life Cycle Analysis in 2006 to guide tech and energy policy decisions with holistic descriptions of energy systems’ sustainability profiles.

2018 Recipient

This year’s award winner, Alex Zunger was honoured for his significant contributions to solar energy, pioneering new theories to improve the performance of solar devices and using unconventional approaches to find new materials to power solar technology. The selection committee cited Zunger’s “outstanding and transformative contributions to the understanding of photovoltaic (PV) and electronic materials interfaces, nanostructure and defects, providing theory guidance to improving device performance, and his first-principles development of innovative ‘inverse design’ for materials discovery.”  Please see the complete press release on this year’s award ceremony here.

2016 Recipient

Renowned researcher, entrepreneur and solar energy expert D. Yogi Goswami of the University of South Florida has been named the 2016 winner of the Karl W. Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit.

Goswami's work focuses on reducing costs and developing efficient, effective storage methods for solar energy as well as harnessing solar energy as a catalyst to address environmental problems. Read the full article on the University of Delaware website.

2015 Recipient

The 2015 winner is Dr. Antonio Luque. ISES President Dr. David Renné attended the award ceremony at the University of Delaware on 13 March 2015, and gave the welcome speech. Watch the highlights in this video.

Among Dr. Luque's contributions to the field were the invention of intermediate band solar cells, which increased efficiency by more than 20 percent (from 41% to 63%), and new solar cells called bifacial silicon solar cells that captured light on both sides -- one side capturing direct light, the other capturing reflected light. Read the full article on the University of Delaware website.

2013 Medal of Merit recipients

  • Prof. Zhores I. Alferov, Nobel Laureate, professor and president of the St. Petersburg Academic University of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and
  • Prof. Viacheslav M. Andreev, professor and head of the laboratory of the A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg.

The scientific activity of Alferov and Andreev has been focused for more than 40 years on research and development of III-V semiconductor heterostructures - combining group III elements such as aluminium, gallium and indium with group V elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus and arsenic specifically to improve solar cells. They developed what are considered the ideal aluminium gallium arsenide/gallium arsenide (AlGaAs/GaAs) lattice matched heterojunctions, allowing for the proposal and realization of a number of semiconductor devices.

To learn more about shis award and the achievements of the 2013 winners, please click here.

Previous Recipients

  • 2011, Richard M. Swanson, for his innovation in the field of photovoltaics and for his tenure as president of SunPower Corp.
  • 2009, Hermann Scheer, for his long-lasting and worldwide commitment to the dissemination of solar energy.
  • 2007, Lawrence Kazmerski, for his leadership in the field of solar electricity from its infancy.
  • 2005, Yoshihiro Hamakawa, for his significant pioneering contributions to the development of high-efficiency thin-film solar cells and the advancement of solar photovoltaic science and technology as a clean energy source.
  • 2003, Martin A. Green, for his innovative research efforts in the development of high performance crystalline silicon solar cell technology.
  • 2001, Allen M. Barnett, for his pioneering high-performance, thin-crystalline silicon solar cells, and outstanding continuing service to the solar electric power community.
  • 1999, Stanford R. Ovshinsky, for pioneering the science of amorphous semiconductors resulting in the development of low-cost thin-film silicon solar cells.
  • 1997, Adolf Goetzberger, for his leadership in the international solar energy community, his research accomplishments and for founding the eminent Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.
  • 1995, David E. Carlson, for the discovery and commercial development of thin film amorphous silicon cells for converting sunlight to electrical energy.
  • 1993, President Jimmy Carter, for spurring development and focusing world attention on the relatively unknown technology for safe and environmentally sound energy production from the sun.