This summer, our team is actively testing the Sunflower Receiver atop Flower Hall — a hybrid concentrated photovoltaic system that captures both electricity and thermal energy, with system efficiencies as high as 85% compared to ~20% for conventional solar panels. The system is now integrated directly into Flower Hall’s building energy infrastructure, a key milestone toward commercial and industrial deployment. This year’s progress was driven in large part by engineering physics graduates Corey Hart, Miriam Lerner, Matt Graf, and Conor Farnan, whose capstone work earned the best Engineering Physics project at Tulane’s 2026 Design Expo. Commercialization efforts are being led by recent Materials Physics and Engineering PhD graduate Siddharth Padmanabha, through the Cleantech Open accelerator and Tulane’s Innovation Institute. The technology was also presented at the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference in New Orleans earlier this summer. Read all about it in a recent Tulane News feature here.