March 1, 2016

A Stanford-led study on grid reliability is one of six recipients of the 2015 Cozzarelli Prize, an award that recognizes outstanding contributions to the scientific disciplines represented by the National Academy of Sciences.

Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, is lead author of the prize-winning paper, "Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water and solar for all purposes." Jacobson is also a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Other co-authors are Mark Delucchi, a research engineer at the University of California-Berkeley, and Stanford graduate students Mary Cameron and Bethany Frew, now at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  Photo: Warren Gretz/NREL

The six winning papers were chosen by the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from the more than 3,000 research articles published in the journal in 2015. The awards represent the six broadly defined classes under which the National Academy of Sciences is organized. The grid study was named top paper in the category of applied biological, agricultural and environmental sciences.

The award was established in 2005 as the Paper of the Year Prize and was renamed in 2007 to honor Nicholas Cozzarelli, the late editor-in-chief of PNAS. "The annual Cozzarelli Prize acknowledges papers that reflect scientific excellence and originality," said an academy news release.  

The 2015 awardees will be recognized at a ceremony during the annual meeting of the academy on May 1 in Washington, D.C. Information about all six awardees can be found here.