Tonio Buonassisi seeks to make solar cells competitive
One day in the 1990s, as he was riding home from high school in São Paulo, Tonio Buonassisi looked out the bus window at the Brazilian city’s long lines of traffic, and its smoggy haze. In that moment, he realized that there had to be better ways for people to produce and use energy — and that he wanted to try to do something about it. “São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world, and was one of the world’s most polluted cities,” Buonassisi recalls. “I was taking the bus home from basketball practice … one of the worst times to be breathing in pollution is right after exercising.” The pollution, which was especially bad that day, led to his decision, at age 16, to work to advance solar energy or public transportation. Since then, Buonassisi — who recently earned tenure at MIT as an associate professor of mechanical...