Brian Tackett Selected for Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program

Brian Tackett, a PhD student working with Chemical Engineering Professor Jingguang Chen, has been selected as one of the DOE’s Office of Science 52 graduate students from across the nation for its 2017 Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program. He will be doing do a part of his dissertation research on “Fundamental Electrochemistry related to Energy Transduction, Storage, and Corrosion” at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on Long Island, working with Dr. Radoslav Adzic. Tackett focuses on developing novel and low-cost electrocatalysts for water electrolysis (turning water into hydrogen and oxygen) and, at BNL, he will study the water-splitting reactions on a class of materials called transition metal nitrides. These nitrides have the potential to reduce the amount of expensive platinum currently used in electrolysis devices. Tackett,  whose project fits under the DOE’s Fundamental Electrochemistry for Energy Storage priority research area, is one of 52 new SCGSR awardees who come from 37 different universities across the U.S. The SCGSR supports these grad students in carrying out part of their doctoral dissertation/thesis research in 12 DOE national laboratories. (September 28, 2017)