MIT World Speakers

Tonio Buonassisi

Tonio Buonassisi runs a lab whose mission involves accelerating the adoption of photovoltaics through improvements in efficiency, cost reduction and materials utilization, among other things. At U.C. Berkeley, where he earned his Ph.D., Buonassisi explored multicrystalline silicon solar cells. He then became a crystal growth scientist at Evergreen Solar, Inc. Buonassisi has also served as a visiting scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Freiburg, Germany), and at the Max-Planck-Institute for Microstructure Physics (Halle, Germany).

Buonassisi has authored or co-authored 58 articles on solar energy. He has received numerous honors, including the European Materials Research Society Young Scientist Presentation Award and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Graduate Student Award.