October 7, 2020

Meet Luke Lyle, a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and a Swartz Center 2020 – 2021 Innovation Fellow.  He completed his MS and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at CMU and also holds a BS and BA in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Buffalo.

The focus of his doctoral research was gallium oxide, a wide bandgap semiconducting material for high power electronic applications. In these applications, gallium oxide is poised to have vastly higher efficiencies than competing materials. This material is critical for developing renewable energy technology by increasing the efficiency of power electronics in electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar cells, and batteries. He is working on commercializing this technology with the development of an industrially scalable, novel technique to grow gallium oxide aiming to leverage this material for use in renewable energy systems.

As a Swartz Innovation Fellow Luke is working with Mobility21 and the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship to commercialize this technology.