The Royal Society of Chemistry has named Yang Yang, UCLA professor of materials science and engineering, as the 2019 recipient of its Sustainable Energy Award for developing new techniques in the processing of organic photovoltaic and hybrid electronic materials.
This work has led to highly efficient, high-performance solar cells technologies. Yang’s UCLA research group has set several world records for power conversion efficiency in solar devices. In 2013, Yang turned his attention to incorporating perovskite, an abundant material with promising electronic properties, into solar cells.
Yang is the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr. Professor of Engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. He joined the school’s faculty in 1997.
Yang has been named as one of the world’s most influential scientists by Thomson Reuters. In 2018 he was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher in three fields — chemistry, physics and materials science — by Clarivate Analytics.
The Royal Society of Chemistry is an international scientific organization that advances the chemical sciences. The society’s Sustainable Energy Award was established in 2008 and is awarded every other year by its Environment, Sustainability & Energy Division. As part of the award, Yang has been invited to give a series of lectures at universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland. He is the first person outside a European university to receive the honor.
