In August 2009, the Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC) was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy as one of 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) established nationally. The EFRC program is focused on laying the scientific groundwork to meet the global need for abundant, clean, and economical energy. PARC brings together a core group of Washington University researchers along with several other select scientists from academia, private research institutes, and national laboratories to produce an international interdisciplinary team.
PARC aims to understand the basic scientific principles that govern solar energy collection by photosynthetic organisms and plans to use this knowledge to enhance natural antenna systems and to fabricate biohybrid and bioinspired systems for light‐harvesting.
