IEEE Spectrum November, 2017 - 3

BACK STORY_

Beyond the Dream

G

rowing up in a sm a ll town near the northern Chinese

CITING ARTICLES IN IEEE SPECTRUM IEEE Spectrum publishes an international and a North American edition, as
indicated at the bottom of each page. Both have the same editorial content, but because of differences in advertising, page
numbers may differ. In citations, you should include the issue designation. For example, Past Forward is in IEEE Spectrum,
Vol. 54, no. 11 (INT), November 2017, p. 56, or in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 54, no. 11 (NA), November 2017, p. 68.

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11.17

RONGKE POWER

city of Dalian, Zhenguo Yang dreamed of "designing cool
cars." At Jilin University in 1981, he applied to the automotive
engineering program but was instead assigned to materials
science and engineering. At the time, he notes, colleges in
China could dictate a student's major.
After graduating, Yang got a Ph.D. at the University of
Connecticut and did a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon. In
between his Ph.D. and postdoc, he worked in the car industry for
several years, as a materials scientist focused on automotive parts
design and materials processing. Along the way, he adopted the first
name "Gary" after hearing Westerners struggle with his Chinese name.
In 2001, he joined Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and his
automotive dreams receded once again.
In 2007, Yang's team at PNNL began studying energy storage
technologies that could help promote the use of renewable energy.
Eventually, the group settled on vanadium redox-flow batteries,
or VRFBs, which had been invented in the 1980s but remained
impractical. Several key breakthroughs by Yang's team at PNNL
seemed to finally make the technology viable. In 2012, Yang left the lab
to cofound UniEnergy Technologies and commercialize VRFBs, which
he writes about in this issue.
"I didn't plan to become an entrepreneur," Yang says. "I was 49 years
old. I already had a few gray hairs." In the end, his desire to have a positive impact on society swayed him. Yang is quick to credit the "incredible team" at PNNL and his startup company. Boyhood dreams may
be well and good, but helping to create a greener, more reliable power
grid has given him great satisfaction-"and a lot of gray hair," he says. ■

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum November, 2017

IEEE Spectrum November, 2017 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum November, 2017 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum November, 2017 - 1
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IEEE Spectrum November, 2017 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum November, 2017 - Cover4
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