Cliff Ho
Digging into Solar Energy
April / May 2010
Volume 8 Number 2
Cliff Ho has made a career out of tackling great challenges at Sandia National Laboratories. The Distinguished Member of Technical Staff has worked on problems in water treatment and distribution, detection of trace explosives, nuclear waste management and microchemical sensor systems for environmental monitoring. He’s now focusing on concentrating solar power and renewable energy technologies. It’s a resume impressive enough to garner international attention and Ho has done it all in just 17 years.
The Chinese Institute of Engineers-USA honored his achievements by naming him the 2010 Asian American Engineer of the Year. The group annually presents the award to outstanding Asian American engineers and scientists who make significant, lasting and global contributions to the nation. Past winners include Steven Chu, the secretary of energy and Nobel laureate and five other physics and chemistry laureates. “I am elated, happy and honored,” Ho says. “It’s a great feeling to receive this award.”
Ho joined the labs in 1993 to develop thermal-hydrologic models for the Yucca Mountain Project and quickly became a lead investigator for the viability assessment and site recommendation reports that were submitted to congress and the president. He also led the development of comprehensive performance-assessment models of complex systems ranging from long-term covers for waste isolation to chemical transport through skin.
In 2000, Ho initiated and led a project to develop microchemical sensors to monitor environmental contaminants in wells, which led to four patents and significant commercial industry interest. He also worked to improve sensor systems and protocols to detect trace explosives for DOE and the Department of Homeland Security. Five years later, he led research in water treatment and distribution security, including UV disinfection and modeling to predict how contaminants would move through the water distribution network.
Ho turned his attention to solar energy in 2008 and is currently a principal investigator in a group that looks for ways to use concentrating solar power to capture and store solar energy for utility-scale electricity production. Concentrating solar power uses a large array of mirrors to focus sunlight onto a receiver, harnessing the resulting heat to generate electricity using a heat engine. He develops models and analyses that can improve the system’s efficiency and performance. For example, the force of gravity and wind can distort the shape of the mirrors, decreasing efficiency and ultimately increasing the cost of electricity. He models those changes to predict and understand impacts of wind and gravity and then works with industry to design more efficient, cost-effective systems.
Ho is also pioneering the use of probabilistic models to more reliably predict the performance and cost of concentrating solar power systems. Probabilistic models have the advantage of being able to quantify the impact of uncertainties on simulated performance metrics such as energy production and cost.
“The objective is to honor the inherent uncertainty in these complex systems,” he says. “We can then provide companies with more confidence and reliability in their models by quantifying the likelihood of achieving specific cost and performance metrics. Sensitivity analyses using these probabilistic models can also be used to prioritize R&D activities on system parameters that have the most impact on these metrics.”
Those around him continue to be impressed with Ho’s innovative work and creative approaches to engineering challenges. Ray Finley and Laurence Costin, two of his managers who have known him since the beginning of his career, wrote in their letter of support, “Cliff is an outstanding scientist and engineer who, over many years, has demonstrated a significant impact on the betterment of society in the true spirit of the engineering profession.”
“As witnessed by his list of publications and the broad support he received from the research community for his nomination, Cliff Ho is an outstanding engineer and analyst,” says Tom Mancini, concentrating solar power program manager. “What isn’t immediately apparent in his vitae is that Cliff is an excellent communicator; he is very good at placing boundaries around problems and stating them in such a way as to make them more readily understood.”
That ability was a hallmark of Ho’s teaching career at the University of New Mexico. Between 1996 and 2003,he served as an adjunct professor in the mechanical engineering and earth and planetary sciences departments. Students recognized his exemplary skills by voting him the “outstanding professor” in 1997.
His love of math, science and engineering started at a young age, and his father, with a Ph.D. in engineering mechanics, encouraged him to pursue mechanical engineering. “My dad thought it was the broadest of the engineering fields,” he says. “I think it continues to appeal to me because of the diversity of projects that I have been able to engage in, from waste management to microchemical sensors to water treatment to solar power. I guess my dad was right.”
Ho’s parents moved from China to the U.S. in the 1950s, and Cliff was born and raised in Wisconsin. He attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. While climbing over a particularly onerous snow drift on his way to class his senior year, he decided he was finished with cold, snowy winters. For graduate school, he headed to the University of California Berkeley, where he met his wife, Sylvia Saltzstein, and earned his masters and doctorate degrees.
The Hos are co-presidents of their neighborhood association and have served on the board of directors for the day care their three daughters attended. In his free time, he enjoys tennis, skiing, biking, golfing and swimming, and he hopes to someday compete in an ironman triathlon. He regularly volunteers with Habitat for Humanity and Sandia’s technology outreach programs, encouraging students to pursue math and science, and to eventually see what Sandia has to offer.
Stephanie Hobby is a writer at Sandia National Laboratories.
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