UA Researcher Sees Possible Job Creation
by October 3, 2011 3:39 pm 79 views
University of Arkansas researchers will share more than $1 million in grant funding with Arkansas State University to develop better solar cells to power satellites.
The funding, partly from NASA, will help electrical engineering professor Omar Manasreh and his team continue developing semiconductor and metallic nanoparticles to be used in solar cells.
Manasreh, a member of the UA’s Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering, said in a release that this work could eventually lead to the start of a private company based in Arkansas.
As the principal investigator on the project, he will receive a total of $710,646. NASA will contribute $473,764, with the rest funded by the university.
Since joining the UA in 2003, Manasreh has received more than $8 million in public research funding to develop a state-of-the-art research lab.
ASU researchers will get $171,235 from NASA and $85,617 from that university. NASA will give $90,000 to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, which will administer the grant through the Arkansas NASA-EPSCoR office based there.
The National Science Foundation created EPSCoR — the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research — to encourage local action to develop long-term improvements in a state’s science and engineering enterprise.