The Jewish National Fund has presented one of their Breakthrough Research Prize to Prof. Avner Rotshild, Materials Science and Engineering at the Technion for his research in high-efficiency decoupled water electrolysis for green hydrogen production at scale.
“The Breakthrough Research Prize proposes to galvanize Israel, also known as the Start-Up Nation, to curb the climate crisis. It aims to support and inspire increased research and development for breakthrough climate solutions by awarding the best and the brightest not-for-profit researchers and/or organizations throughout Israel with the prize’s funding and recognition.
The prize of $1-Million USD will be granted to a maximum of four (4) researchers, annually, in recognition of their work on promising solutions to our climate crisis. Proposals will be evaluated by a world-class judging panel and the recipient will be announced during a live competition in Israel which will be broadcast, worldwide.”
Prof. Avner Rothschild studied physics and materials engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and graduated in 2003 with a PhD on metal-oxide gas sensors. After a three-year postdoc at MIT he returned to the Technion as a faculty member at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the head of the Electrochemical Materials & Devices research group. His research focuses on electrochemical and photoelectrochemical materials and devices for water splitting as a means of sustainable production of green hydrogen from renewable energies such as solar and wind. Professor Rothschild is a co-founder of H2Pro, a startup company that develops a transformative water splitting technology for low-cost production of green hydrogen at scale. He was a member of several European consortia and had an ERC consolidator grant on photoelectrochemical water splitting. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and in 2020 he won the 2020 Eric and Sheila Samson Prime Minister’s Prize for Global Innovation in Alternative Fuels for Transportation.