M. thermoacetica first made its debut as the first non-photosensitive bacterium to carry out artificial photosynthesis in a study led by Peidong Yang, a professor in UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry. By attaching light-absorbing nanoparticles made of cadmium sulfide (CdS) to the bacterial membrane exterior, the researchers turned M. thermoacetica into a tiny photosynthesis machine, converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into useful chemicals.
With the right technology, the gas station of the future will make its own fuel directly from sunlight, in the process sucking up carbon and producing oxygen. Decades into the future, the same technology could provide fuel and oxygen for the first Martians, and could even be tweaked to produce fertilizer.
Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry and faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab, and his colleagues have tweaked the chemical structure of perovskite — a versatile material that already rivals silicon-based solar cells — so that the material turns from transparent
The ACS January 2018 Special Biochemistry Issue has included College of Chemistry professors Ming Hammond, Evan Miller, and David Savage among the 44 early career scientists identified as representing the future of biochemistry. These scientists are noted by the publication for tackling problems of biological relevance.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category goes, in this tenth edition, to Jordanian-American chemist Omar Yaghi, “
Naomi Ginsberg and her colleagues 
A breakthrough by Peidong Yang could one day help tall buildings use dramatically less energy, by using their windows to generate electricity.
With the right technology, the gas station of the future will make its own fuel directly from sunlight, in the process sucking up carbon and producing oxygen. Decades into the future, the same technology could provide fuel and oxygen for the first Martians, and could even be tweaked to produce fertilizer.
The research, led by Peidong Yang of Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division
The ACS January 2018 Special Biochemistry Issue has included College of Chemistry professors Ming Hammond, Evan Miller, and David Savage among the 44 early career scientists identified as representing the future of biochemistry. These scientists are noted by the publication for tackling problems of biological relevance.