New materials for renewable energy applications will be the subject of a symposium at the Center for the Arts April 21-22.

The New York State Section of the American Physical Society (APS) will hold its 116th topical symposium titled “Materials for Renewable Energy” at UB. The event is sponsored in part by UB’s Department of Physics, Department of Electrical Engineering, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the UB RENEW Institute. Symposium co-organizers are Hao Zeng and Peihong Zhang, both professors of physics, and Uttam Singisetti, assistant professor of electrical engineering.

The symposium will feature talks on the design and development of materials for renewable energy. The research topics include photovoltaics, catalysis, and membranes to nanogenerators and piezotronics. Additional discussions include encompassing materials synthesis, characterization, device fabrication and theory. In addition to invited talks, a poster session will be held on April 21. Undergraduates are urged to attend and submit posters of their work.

The keynote lecture, which also will be a RENEW Innovation Lecture, will be given by Zhong Lin Wang, the Hightower Chair in Materials Science and Engineering and Regents’ Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. Wang is credited with inventing piezoelectric nanogenerators and initiating the field of nanoenergy.

Registration is free for all students and open through April 17. A dinner banquet is free for presenting students and $20 for other students. Students can apply for financial support of up to $150 from APS to cover their travel costs.