Friedrich Prinz

Biography

Fritz Prinz is the Finmeccanica Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. He also serves as the Director of the Nanoscale Prototyping Laboratory at Stanford. A solid-state physicist by training, Prinz leads a group of doctoral students who are addressing fundamental issues on energy conversion and storage at the nanoscale. In his Laboratory, prototype fuel cells, solar cells and batteries are used to test new concepts and novel material structures using atomic layer deposition, scanning tunneling microscopy and other technologies. Prinz is also interested in learning from nature, particularly understanding the electron transport chain in plant cells. The Prinz group, in collaboration with biologist Arthur Grossman, were the first to extract electrons directly from plant cells subjected to light stimulus. Before coming to Stanford in 1994, he was on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. Prinz earned a PhD in physics at the University of Vienna in Austria.

Research Interest

Additive Manufacturing- From Fundamentals to Applications, Mechanical Engineering Design