Alex Polizzotti

Background

About Alex Polizzotti

I am passionate about climate change mitigation, and have structured my career around the push for large-scale renewable energy deployment. Whether working on photovoltaics or most recently on grid-scale energy storage, my drive is to help create a sustainable energy future. In January 2023, I joined the exciting team at Form Energy in Somerville, MA. I work with the characterization team to apply advanced metrology to Form's unique iron-air long-term energy storage technology. At the start of 2020, I joined First Solar to run the analytical lab for their CA advanced research office. I oversee a team to support all teams site-wide with a variety of materials characterization solutions and in-depth analysis. In fall of 2018, I joined Alta Devices as a characterization engineer. I worked with all teams to design and improve metrology to suit various projects within the company. From 2013-2018, I attended MIT as a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering in the lab of Prof. Tonio Buonassisi. My work focused on tin sulfide (SnS) absorber layers for earth-abundant photovoltaics - specifically, the systematic prediction, identification, and mitigation of harmful point defects in novel materials. From 2011 - 2013 I held a Junior Fellow position at the DOE SunShot program (now SETO) where I focused primarily on Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (CZTS), an earth-abundant absorber material, and related alloys including Cu(In,Ga)Se2. I organized and led an international meeting of experts on CZTS, CIGS and related materials. For a full list of my publications on SnS and other work, please see below or refer to