Da Vinci Circle Selects Erin Ratcliff

EERIN RATCLIFF HAS always had the makings of a successful electrochemist and an interface scientist – starting with her “super soaps” as a child in Wisconsin.

“I would take all of the soaps and mix them together,” she said, “which really just meant I made a super surfactant.”

Now Ratcliff is an associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering and chemistry and biochemistry at the UA; co-director of the Institute for Energy Solutions; and director of the $10.95 million Center for Soft PhotoElectroChemical Systems, an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Most recently, Ratcliff, who also has a joint appointment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, was named the College of Engineering’s 2023 da Vinci Fellow. Among other support, generous donors to the da Vinci Circle fund faculty members who engage in multidisciplinary research, selecting one faculty member each year as a fellow. The award comes with a onetime grant of $10,000.

“I’m so thrilled to have been selected,” said Ratcliff, who is also the director of the Laboratory for Interface Science of Printable Electronic Materials. “I’m among some very prestigious peers at the university. I plan to use the award to fund all my grad students and postdocs to go to an important conference in North Carolina this summer.”

Ratcliff first joined the UA as a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry and biochemistry in 2007, where her advisor was Neal Armstrong, Regents Professor of chemistry and biochemistry and optical sciences. She went on to receive national recognition for her work helping Armstrong with his EFRC.

“She not only was doing very highlevel science in my group and mentoring students at the same time, but she was taking notes on how big, multidisciplinary science centers are organized,” Armstrong said. “It was only natural that she was going to wind up directing an EFRC.”

There have been only 104 EFRCs established since they were conceived in 2009. Ratcliff’s center, known as SPECS, is focused on the molecular-level science behind lowcost, highly scalable soft semiconductor technologies.