Lynn Loo, clean energy pioneer and former Andlinger Center director, elected to National Academy of Engineering
Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo, a leading expert in clean energy technologies, champion of maritime decarbonization, and former Andlinger Center director, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering, announced on Feb. 11.
Loo, the Theodora D. ’78 and William H. Walton III ’74 Professor in Engineering, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, and a 2001 graduate alumna in chemical engineering, was elected for “contributions in developing processing-structure-property relationships in organic, polymer, and hybrid electronic materials, and leadership in decarbonizing shipping.”
Loo has driven major advances in solar-cell technology throughout her research career. While conventional solar cells are made from silicon, Loo has focused on other classes of materials, especially organic variants. By studying what she calls the “processing-structure-property” relationships of these materials, she has developed techniques for manufacturing organic electronics at far lower costs and/or longer lifetimes than traditional methods. This work has also enabled new forms for solar cells—in flexible, transparent films that can be used in a much wider range of applications than silicon. She has also led the way on creating stable, efficient solar cells from a class of materials called perovskites, which promise to further broaden the possibilities for solar energy.
From 2016 to 2021, Loo served as the second director of Princeton’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, where she commissioned the Net-Zero America Study. In 2021 she became the founding CEO of the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD), a Singapore-based nonprofit organization that aims to slash the carbon footprint associated with international shipping. Under her leadership, GCMD has launched several industry-first initiatives to lower the risks of adopting clean fuels, especially for first movers. They have developed and piloted safety and operational protocols for ammonia bunkering, a promising refueling process that had posed challenges for the industry. And they have demonstrated biofuels tracing solutions to strengthen supply chain integrity. Loo also co-founded a company in 2017, Andluca Technologies, a maker of smart-window products that draw on research from her Princeton lab.
Loo is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the Materials Research Society. Past honors include an Owens-Corning Award and the Alan P. Colburn Award from the American Institute for Chemical Engineers, a John H. Dillon Medal from the APS, an Alfred Sloan Fellowship and an NSF CAREER Award, among many others. In 2004 she was named one of the World’s Top 100 Young Innovators by the MIT Technology Review, and in 2012 she was recognized as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Loo spent one year as postdoctoral researcher at Bell Labs and five years as an assistant professor at the University of Texas-Austin. She joined the Princeton faculty as an associate professor in 2007.
Adapted from a story originally published by the School of Engineering and Applied Science.