Dr. Tabitha. Amollo, a lecturer in the Department of Physics at Egerton University together with Prof. Qi Hua Fan, of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University (MSU), as project leads, are among the 2024 Partnerships for Innovative Research in Africa (PIRA) award winners. The award comes at the end of Dr. Amollo’s one-year postdoctoral research fellowship in the African Futures Research Leadership Program, by Alliance for African Partnership (AAP) at MSU. During the fellowship, she was hosted in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering by Prof. Fan as the host mentor. Their research focused on developing technologies and materials for various applications including solar energy conversion and protective and display coatings. Plasma processing for optimized thin films production formed a major part of their research. Congratulations Dr. Amollo!!
The project, awarded $100,000 by AAP, titled ‘‘Develop a Partnership for Renewable Energy Research and Education’’ is aimed at scaling the research partnership birthed during Dr. Amollo’s research visit to MSU. The PIRA project will strengthen and expand the collaboration between the two institutions by significantly enhancing the research capacity, developing an advanced training platform, and broadening outreach activities. The grant will support graduate students of Egerton University as well as MSU. The students will be trained on artificial intelligence assisted optimization of thin films processing, plasma enhanced thin films deposition, and solar cells fabrication. These trainings will be done onsite and virtually. Further, some of the project outcomes will be utilized for community outreach in Kenya. For more detailed AAP Press Release see the attached document.
