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Bandgap
Engineering's Marcie Black takes solar to the nanolevel
Marcie Black
Chief Technology Officer, Bandgap Engineering Inc.
Education:
Bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D, MIT. Post-doctoral work at
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Noteworthy:
As the chief technology officer of a 2-year-old startup, Black leads
the effort of nanoengineering silicon to boost its energy-trapping efficiency
without making the solar cell more expensive to produce. Bandgap has garnered
$6 million worth of venture capital funding and will put it to work over
the next year tweaking the cell’s design and finding ways to partner
with other solar cell makers.
On wanting to become
a scientist
“For me, my strengths have always been math and science. … I
knew I wasn’t going to be a writer. My father is an engineer, so
that may be a part of it. When I was younger, I was an Explorer (a co-ed
branch of the Boy Scouts of America) and our branch did electrical engineering
and computer science at Lucent. We got a chance to tinker in the labs.”
Her passion for
solar
“For me, it’s definitely the environmental aspects. Clean energy
definitely has economic impacts, and I recognize all that, but my strengths
are best suited to help the world solve the energy problem. Solar is unique
among renewable-energy resources because it can be the primary source
of energy moving forward. Not only does it fit in with what I’m good
at, but it can help change the world.”
One thing you’ve
learned from starting your own company
“It’s a lot of work but it’s been fun. You have to believe
(the technology) is going to work before it works … but I’ve
been lucky to have a very good co-founder. We kind of joke that he’s
getting a lesson in Photovoltaics 101 and I’m getting a lesson in
Business 101.”
Where will your
company be two years from now?
“We have eight people right now, and we plan on keeping it there
until the technology is ready. We have a prototype and we’re optimizing
that prototype, then we will have to make it marketable.”
Favorite pastimes
“I have two kids — that’s pretty much what I do. Once in
a while, I get a chance to sneak to the gym.”
Is there still
a barrier to women pursuing hard sciences?
“The women before us have gotten rid of many of the barriers, but
there is still very subtle discouragement of women. There are so many
challenges in the world that I don’t think we can afford to limit
the talent pool.”
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