Mani Receives Blavatnik Award

Tomoyasu Mani, former Goldhaber fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and current assistant professor in the University of Connecticut's Department of Chemistry, has received the 2016 Blavatnik Regional Award for Young Scientists in the chemistry category.

The awards, established in 2007 by the Blavatnik Family Foundation in partnership with the New York Academy of Sciences, celebrate the innovative achievements of postdoctoral scientists 42 years of age or younger who work in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut. Mani is being recognized for his "advances in the understanding of electron transport occurring in organic photovoltaics used in solar energy capture and conversion."

"I'm very honored to be recognized by the Blavatnik Regional Award,” Mani said. “As an early-career scientist, I appreciate the increased visibility in the field of chemistry and the larger scientific community that this award will bring me, and I look forward to continuing to make contributions to the field.”

At Brookhaven, Mani studied how delocalized electrons move through chains of organic molecules with alternating double and single bonds. Organic photovoltaic devices use these "conjugated" molecules to convert sunlight into electricity.

"Although younger generations of scientists may be unfamiliar with radiation chemistry or find it hard to apply to their work, my research to understand fundamental processes in organic solar cells is a good example of how radiation chemistry can provide us with valuable information that is hard or impossible to come by using other means,” Mani said.

Mani, the other two regional award winners, and the six regional finalists will be honored in November at a ceremony during the New York Academy of Sciences Annual Gala in New York City.