Professor Betley recognized as  "top innovator" for recreating photosynthesis
PROBLEM: Every day, plants, algae, and bacteria generate more energy than all the world's power plants, using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and then storing the energy in sugar molecules. Artificial photosynthes­is--the process of using solar power to split water through the creation of chemical bonds, as plants do--holds promise as a clean, cheap source of hydrogen to power fuel cells...

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Undergraduates develop "dirt-powered" microbial fuel cells to light Africa
A team composed of Harvard students and alumni was among the winners of the World Bank's Lighting Africa 2008 Development Marketplace competition, held in Accra, Ghana from May 6 to 8, 2008. The innovation, microbial fuel cell-based lighting systems suitable for Sub-Saharan Africa, netted the group a $200,000 prize...

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Harvard University research team receives funding to commercialize novel solid oxide fuel cell technology
Harvard University's Office of Technology Development (OTD) and Allied Minds, a pre-seed investment corporation specializing in early stage university business ventures, today announced that Allied Minds has committed $500,000 in SiEnergy Systems, LLC, a new Harvard spin-off that is commercializing a new solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology developed at Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS)...

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Nanowire makes own electricity
Harvard chemists have built a new wire out of photosensitive materials that is hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. The wire not only carries electricity to be used in vanishingly small circuits, but generates power as well...

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