 I'd like to welcome to the stage Bethany McBride. Bethany is from the A New College of Science, and the title of her three-minute thesis tonight is Ceramics for Solar. Our world has high energy demands, but our go-to fossil fuels are destroying our climate. We need to look for new ways to harvest power, and we need to get creative about it. In a garden, we might find green plants in a terracotta pot illuminated by the sun. The plants can use sunlight for their energy needs, but what about that pot? Pottery contains the fundamental building blocks required for the cheap and simple solar power we so desperately need. The humble pot is comprised of tiny crystals made of metals and oxygen. You might know these kinds of materials by another name, ceramics. Ceramics are far more versatile than you might think. They're also far easier to produce than the high-purity silicon used in standard solar devices. We just need to get them to generate power for us. To generate solar power, when we shine sunlight on our materials, electrical charges need to be set free from the atoms inside. These charges must then be made to flow in a certain direction and exit the material, producing electricity. Think of this process like navigating a maze. Imagine you're an electrical charge standing at the entrance door. Sunlight is your go signal. If the door is closed, you can't go anywhere. But if the door is open, you can enter the maze. But if you don't know the layout, you might get lost. The best solar materials will have both an open door and a clear guide to the exit so the charges can get quickly through when the sun is up. For me to make solar ceramics, I need to start with a great foundation for my maze. There's a naturally occurring ceramic mineral called perovskite, which is already really close to achieving solar power. Its door is open to sunlight some of the time, but not all of the time. Also, the atomic arrangement inside perovskite is just a small tweak away from being able to guide charges in selected directions. A great foundation for cheap solar power. My strategy to make solar ceramics is to change the elements inside that perovskite layout so it can use more sunlight and guard charge. I'm doing this with common and easy-to-handle elements like iron and nickel. This means I can make my ceramics cheaply, kind of like pottery, by mixing them together, molding them into a shape and baking them at high temperature. With this work, I hope, ceramics can pave the way to a multitude of applications like you've never imagined. Personally, I dream to one day own a solar garden gnome. Cheap, simple and innovative solar power from garden variety materials is just a few elements away.