Paper-thin, Organic Photovoltaic Circuits Fabricated Directly on Ubiquitous, Everyday Substrates

Dr. Karen K. Gleason is the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1982, she simultaneously received her B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from MIT. In 1987, she was awarded a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. She received both the NSF Presidential Young Investigator and ONR Young Investigators Program awards. In 2000, Dr. Gleason was the Van Ness Award Lecturer at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. From 2001 to 2004 she served as Executive Officer (Vice-Chair) of MIT's Chemical Engineering Department; from 2005 to 2008 she served as Associate Director for MIT's Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies; and from 2008 to 2001 she served as Associate Dean for Research at MIT's School of Engineering.

 

Prof. Gleason has authored more than 200 publications including multiple invited review articles on the chemical vapor deposition of polymers that have appeared in the journals Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics, Chemical Vapor Deposition, and Materials Today. She serves on the Editorial Boards of Plasma Processes and Polymers and Chemical Engineering Communications and has been a Guest Editor for a special issue of Chemical Vapor Deposition. She is the inventor on more than a dozen issued U.S. Patents. Her international scientific experiences include appointments as Donders Visiting Professorship at Utrecht University, Netherlands; Mawson Lecturer at the University of South Australia; keynote lecture at the MURAI Workshop on Low k Dielectrics, Tsukuba, Japan; and chair of the Gordon Conference of Diamond Synthesis, Oxford, UK.

The Media Lab is a place where the future is lived, not imagined. Our domain is applying unorthodox research approaches for envisioning the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life—technologies that promise to fundamentally transform our most basic notions of human capabilities. Unconstrained by traditional disciplines, Lab designers, engineers, artists, and scientists work atelier-style in close to 30 re search groups conducting more than 300 projects that range from neuroengineering, to how children learn, to a stackable, electric car for tomorrow's city. Lab researchers foster a unique culture of learning by doing, developing technologies that empower people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all societies, to design and invent new pos sibilities for themselves and their communities.