Photo: Michigan State University College of Engineering.
Richard Lunt
Richard R. Lunt is a University Distinguished Professor and the David L. and Denise M. Lamp Endowed Chair in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Michigan State University, where he leads the Molecular Organic Electronics (MOE) research group. He serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Science Advances.
Lunt's group investigates materials — organic molecules, halide perovskites, and engineered nanostructures — tuned to absorb only the non-visible parts of the solar spectrum (ultraviolet and near-infrared), so a coating or pane can remain visibly transparent while still capturing usable solar energy at its edges. His group's 2013 demonstration of a fully transparent luminescent solar concentrator is a foundational reference point for the transparent-solar-window field, and later work (2019, in Joule) pushed the field toward more rigorous, standardized ways of reporting transparency and efficiency together, since the two are frequently traded off in ways that make marketing claims difficult to compare fairly.
Direct link to the Regenerate capability as the leading academic researcher behind transparent luminescent solar concentrator technology — one of the few approaches in this field aiming for genuinely high visible transparency, as opposed to the partial, patterned transparency of most commercially available semi-transparent glazing today.