July 27, 2011, Updated September 11, 2012

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researcher Dr. Taleb Mokari has been selected to receive a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) in 2011 for his plan to develop cheap and efficient solar energy material. The ERC grants are considered Europe’s most prestigious research awards.

Mokari of the Department of Chemistry and the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology focuses on creating hybrid nano-materials to generate green energy. He hopes to develop materials that would replace silicon-based solar panels and be both cheap and efficient.

“I think we received full score for our proposal because it combines basic academic scientific research with a very new and exciting technological horizon,” he said.

The ERC’s mission statement is to encourage “pioneering frontier research in any field of science, engineering and scholarship.”

Mokari was granted 1.5 million euros for five years.

This is the seventh ERC grant awarded at BGU in the three years since they were created. In 2010, Israel ranked fourth in number of recipients of ERC grants.

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