Patrick Brown, PhD

Patrick Brown, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in energy systems at the MIT Energy Initiative, exploring strategies for integrating large amounts of renewable energy and energy storage onto the electric grid. As a Hertz Fellow, he pursued his PhD at MIT in the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory under Professor Vladimir Bulović. Patrick’s thesis research explored the use of colloidal nanocrystals as light-absorbing active materials in thin film solar cells, focusing on the influence of the nanocrystals’ surface chemistry on their electronic properties and performance in solar cells. As an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame, he studied the use of carbon nanostructures in dye-sensitized solar cells and spent two summers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory exploring the use of carbon nanotubes as hydrogen storage substrates, supercapacitor electrodes, and transparent electrodes for solar cells.