Sharon Chou

Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

310 - Young Women in Research: Innovations Impacting Tomorrow

Sharon Chou is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow currently pursuing a Ph. D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University, where she is investigating novel materials for solar thermal energy conversion. Discovery of thermally stable materials with high electron emissivity would allow thermionic conversion of heat or solar radiation directly to electricity with efficiencies exceeding 50%.

Sharon received degrees in electrical engineering and computer science with a minor in biomedical engineering from MIT. She has worked as a mixed-signal circuit design engineer at Texas Instruments. As well, she has developed software for semiconductor wafer handling at Intel, immunology research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and ER patient monitoring at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Sharon enjoys mentoring and advising younger students while exploring the nexus between science and art.