Sarah Kurtz obtained her Ph.D. in 1985 from Harvard University and is now a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Merced, after more than 30 years at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. She is known for her contributions to developing multijunction GaInP/GaAs solar cells, supporting the concentrator photovoltaic (PV) industry, and leading efforts on PV performance and reliability.
Her work has been recognized with a jointly received Dan David Prize in 2007, the Cherry Award in 2012, a C3E Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, and induction into the National Academy of Engineering in 2020.
At UC Merced, Kurtz is working both to help the university grow and to support the energy transition by studying long-duration energy storage, monitoring of perovskite/silicon tandem modules, and starting a new study on agrivoltaics to help California sustain its agriculture with reduced water consumption while continuing to add more solar.
Research interests: Sustainable energy