SCHLENKER GROUP

Schlenker is the Washington Research Foundation Innovation Associate Professor of Chemistry and Clean Energy at the University of Washington in Seattle.  The Schlenker Group specializes in monitoring and manipulating electronic dynamics at various complex chemical interfaces such as those involved in rechargeable battery chemistries, metal-free solar photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution, solar photonics, and next-generation photovoltaic materials. We are addressing scientific questions that are central to the broader challenge of energy sustainability. Our goal is to develop a conceptual bridge to span the gap between bottom-up molecular design and top-down device engineering. Central to our approach is the development of in operando spectroscopies that we use in working devices to identify active species that are responsible for energy conversion in our solar cells, batteries, and photocatalysts.

Professor Schlenker earned his PhD working with Professor Mark E. Thompson as the Anton B. Burg Foundation Endowed Fellow in Chemistry at the University of Southern California, where he synthesized small molecule dyes and charge transport materials and he developed advanced device engineering concepts for thin-film photovoltaics.  After finishing his PhD, Dr. Schlenker was an NSF SEES Fellow studying photoinduced charge transfer and recombination in novel semiconducting polymers and life cycle assessment (LCA) of emerging energy technologies in the respective Departments of Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering at UW.