Watson Lecture - Sunlight to Everything: Catalyzing a Sustainable Future

Sunlight is an inexhaustible resource. Its energy is key to reducing carbon emissions, decreasing waste, and lessening CO₂ emissions. These goals are essential to mitigating the worst effects of climate change. Caltech's Resnick Sustainability Institute (RSI), led by Bren Professor of Chemistry Jonas Peters, has defined Sunlight to Everything as one of its four central research initiatives. Using sunlight, RSI researchers are imagining how to generate and manage electricity more efficiently; convert it to chemical fuels, materials, and fertilizers; and use it to power water purification. The discovery of new catalysts that can convert sunlight into desired chemical feedstocks is one of the key hurdles they face. The hunt is on, and in this lecture Peters will explain how and where he and his colleagues are looking.

This Zoom webinar is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required.

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Each Watson Lecture will begin at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time as a Zoom Webinar with live audience Q&A at the end. Please note the new start time. At 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time the recorded lecture (without Q&A) will be posted on Caltech's YouTube channel.

About the Speaker

Jonas Peters is Bren Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech.

About the Series

Since 1922, The Earnest C. Watson Lecture Series has brought Caltech's most innovative scientific research to the public. The series is named for Earnest C. Watson, a professor of physics at Caltech from 1919 until 1959. Spotlighting a small selection of the pioneering research Caltech's faculty is currently conducting, the Watson Lectures are geared toward a general audience, as part of the Institute's ongoing commitment to benefiting the local community through education and outreach. Through a gift from the estate of Richard C. Biedebach, the lecture series is able to highlight assistant professors' research each season.

Many past Watson Lectures are available in a playlist on YouTube.