Dr. Deutsch has been researching hydrogen technologies at NREL for over 20 years, starting with his graduate studies on III-V semiconductor water-splitting systems under the joint guidance of Dr. John Turner (NREL) and Prof. Carl Koval in the Chemistry department at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He officially joined NREL as a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Turner’s group in 2006 and became a staff scientist two years later.
Since 2014, he has led NREL’s applied photoelectrochemical water-splitting program that aims to identify and characterize appropriate materials for economically generating hydrogen fuel from water using sunlight as the only energy input. His work has focused on multijunction III-V semiconductors and corrosion remediation strategies for high-efficiency water-splitting photoelectrodes. In the last five years he been awarded funding to develop advanced bipolar membranes for reversible fuel cells, CO2 electrolyzers, and electrochemically-based carbon-capture systems. Dr. Deutsch has been presented with the DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program R&D award twice and has received the NREL President’s Award for Outstanding Research.
He has also been honored as an Outstanding Mentor by the United States Department of Energy, Office of Science nine times in recognition of his work as an advisor to over thirty students in the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship program at NREL. He received a B.S. in Chemistry, cum laude, from Humboldt State University and a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Colorado-Boulder.