Luisa Whittaker-Brooks (born 1981) is an American chemist who is an associate professor at the University of Utah. She was named a L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science honouree in 2013 and one of Chemical & Engineering News' Talented 12 in 2017.
Early life and education
Whittaker grew up in Panama. As a child, she became interested in the hydroelectric dams that powered Panama. She started to think about alternative sources of energy. Whittaker earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Panama, where she studied analytical chemistry. She moved to the United States for her graduate studies, where she joined the University at Buffalo as a Fulbright Program fellow. There she completed her master's and doctoral degrees within three and a half years. For her doctoral research Whittaker studied vanadium oxide. Vanadium oxide is opaque when hot and transparent when cold, and Whittaker wondered whether it could be used to coat windows and keep buildings cool. Throughout her doctoral research she worked to lower the transition temperature that this phase change occurs at, and eventually commercialised her technology. Whittaker-Brooks worked as a postdoctoral scholar with Yueh-Lin Loo, where she used low-temperature hydrothermal methods to study zinc oxide nanostructures.
Research and career
Whittaker studies novel photovoltaic and thermoelectric materials for energy generation and storage. She is particularly interested in chalcogenides and perovskites and how their composition and structure impacts their electronic properties. Whittaker has researched how bias stress and sample heterogeneity impact the performance and operational lifetime of organic-inorganic halide perovskites (OIHPs). She has also studied the role of excitons in their operational stability and impact of moisture and oxygen. In 2019 she was elected to the advisory board of ChemNanoMat.
Awards and honours
2007 Fulbright Program Fellow
2013 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards
2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences 2017 Chemical & Engineering News' Talented 12 2017 National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers Lloyd N. Ferguson Young Scientist Award for Excellence in Research 2017 American Physical Society Ovshinsky Sustainable Energy Fellow 2018 Journal of Materials Chemistry A Emerging Leader 2021 Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award