Another Day at Work

This morning I casually caught the usual train into VUW, only to discover that the Institute was hosting a student conference. Although I had not registered, I wandered over to check out the program and was just in time to catch the opening talk at 10am.

The lecture theatre was full, and I was amazed that so many people had come to hear the students. They hadn't. They were there to hear the plenary lecture by Daniel Nocera on the Global Energy Crisis. It is not often that one comes across someone who actually seems to understand the important issues. The talk was extremely informative and entertaining, not shying away from morbid jokes about superbugs for the control of population growth, or wry comments about the probable non implementation of improved standards for women's education.

After this half hour summary of the true state of affairs, we then learned that Nocera's lab works on the development of (amongst other things) artificial photosynthesis for solar energy storage, at the household level. Moreover, their systems are already being developed commercially. Now that is cool.