Energy

There's a direct positive correlation between energy consumption and standard of living. Access to energy like electricity is critical for basic human needs like heating, lighting, cooling, electronics, transportation, and telecommunications. Yet, astonishingly, 759 million people in the world still don't have access to electricity with more than half in Sub-Saharan Africa. This disparity is stark: an average American (80,000 kWh) uses 2.58 times more than the average Chinese (31,051 kWh) and 194.6 times more than the average Congolese (411 kWh).

How can we provide Americans' standard of living and energy needs to all 7.8 billion people? The world's current energy infrastructure cannot scale to support 7 billion people without major consequences such as accelerating climate change, depleting of non-renewable resources, and overloading global energy infrastructure.

This is one of the most important problems in the world. I'm particularly interested in the research, development, and adoption of fusion energy, fission energy, solar photovoltaic (PV), next-generation batteries (solid-state, lithium-sulfur), and large-scale energy storage solutions.