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Name: Benjia “Dak” Dou, PhD student
Hometown: Tibet, China
Advisors: Frank��Barnes & Sean Shaheen��

My Path to Engineering

I grew up in the beautiful mountainous area of Eastern Tibetan Plateau, where my family grows Himalayan barley and herds yaks, among other things. With an average elevation over 4,000 meters and an area of 2.5 million square kilometers, the plateau is the highest and largest plateau on Earth and known as the third pole. It has a variety of unique geological features such as large areas of glaciers and permafrost, both are sensitive to warming climate. Growing up, I witnessed significant changes in local ecological system such as large-scale desertification of grasslands and disappearing of snow-covered mountains. Particularly, while I was in my freshman year of the undergraduate studies in electrical engineering at a university in an eastern Chinese city, I had the opportunity to tour around a large part of Tibetan plateau with an ecological research group, which educated me that the changes I witnessed in my hometown is not a local phenomenon, but a systemic change that is threating the fragile ecological system of the plateau. Learning that one of the technical solutions to address such challenge is developing renewable energies that leave minimal footprint on local environment, I was motivated to study renewable energy technologies that could offer a sustainable development path to my hometown. With such motivation, studying solar energy naturally become very interesting to me.

I was highly motivated to study solar energy. While my undergraduate program in Tianjin, China, offered me a unique opportunity of learning all aspects of technological fundamentals of challenges of solar energy, including materials, power electronics, power system integration, I was not satisfied with the depth. Therefore, I decided to apply to a graduate school to deepen my understanding of solar energy and to find possible ways to implement the technology in developing communities like my hometown.

Why CU Boulder?

When I was planning to apply to graduate schools in the U.S., I had a very limited knowledge of universities and the different programs universities offer. However, I was fortunate to have an American friend. I consulted her with regard to where should I apply to study solar energy in the states, and she forwarded my inquiries to a wide range of professors she knew in her college. Among the multiple responses I got, CU is the most recommended school with its excellent engineering education and its unique collaboration with the , the nation’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development, and the largest and the best-known research lab for renewable energy development in the world. Without hesitation, I applied to the school as my first choice, and I was thrilled when I was accepted.

My PhD��research focuses on printing high efficient, more stable, scalable solar cells with roll-to-roll coating system, the same technology that is used for printing newspapers all over the world. With high throughput, low-labor-cost and low materials usage, roll-to-roll of the solar cell can be a transformative manufacturing method that could significantly reduce the cost of solar energy.

The number one thing I love about CU is the tremendous research opportunity it offers. Due to CU’s special connection��with NREL and the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, I, as a graduate student, had the chance to perform my doctoral study in NREL to study with some of the best scientists in the world on solar energy. All the faculty members I worked with are super-supportive and give me all the resources I need to perform my research. Beyond my technical study, I appreciate my educational experience at CU more due to its active, collaborative, in-depth research focus on the world and its investigations that are making a significant impact globally. For instance, it has a very robust contemporary Tibet Himalayan research initiative that connects Himalayan experts from different disciplines, including geology, anthropology, critical media practices, linguistics, religious studies��and sociology, to form active, robust and healthy research community of the region. With such a program, I was able to learn in-depth analysis of all aspects of my hometown while thousands of miles away from home.