Season 1, Episode 5 -- Alternative Energy

Avoiding the changing climate's most extreme impacts will require a technological revolution to power daily life from renewable sources. An entrepreneur, an engineering professor and a DOE-laboratory materials scientist – all DOE CSGF and Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni – discuss technical challenges from nuclear energy to heat transfer to hydrogen generation and the importance of choosing high-impact research problems. In addition to talking about science, engineering and computation, they highlight the need for a strong social and political movement to drive a complete overhaul of our energy infrastructure. You'll meet: Leslie Dewan is a nuclear engineering entrepreneur and venture capitalist, who is currently the CEO of RadiantNano, a startup focused on radiation detection, identification and imaging. Asegun Henry is an MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering. What he calls his "sun in a box" design could lead to a viable system for storing renewable energy for the electrical grid. Brandon Wood is the associate program lead for Hydrogen and Computational Energy Materials at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and deputy director of the Laboratory for Energy Applications for the Future (LEAF).