Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Sunday, December 11th, 2016
New York (TADIAS) — Ethiopian American scientist Sossina M. Haile who is Professor of Materials Science & Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University was born in Addis Ababa and moved permanently to the US when she was ten years old. Today, Sossina is one the leading researchers in the United States whose work to find alternative sources of fuel has helped push the worldwide green energy revolution.
“If we are to use the sun as our primary energy source, then we definitely need to develop ways to store its energy for use on demand,” she told Tadias in a profile interview a few years ago when she was teaching at California Institute of Technology. “In my lab we have started to do this by converting the sunlight to heat, and then using the heat to drive reactions that create fuels like hydrogen and methane from water and carbon dioxide.”
In a recent highlight entitled Bottling the Sun: Sossina Haile’s Research Brings the World Closer to Liquid Energy Fueled by the Sun Northwestern University Mccormick School of Engineering’s magazine gives an update on her research explaining that “The solar reactor in Sossina Haile’s laboratory is respiring oxygen. And with its every breath, the world comes another step closer to bringing the vision of liquid solar fuels to life.”
“My lab does not have the total energy solution, but we do have a couple pieces of it,” Sossina told the publication. “I can give you two components that will help you get to the end.”