Spark

Kwabena Bediako ’08 still recalls his first Michigan winter and the shock of walking to an 8 a.m. class in negative 2-degree weather. A native of Ghana, he described the experience to friends and family as something akin to being trapped inside a freezer, only colder.

Dr. Bediako’s life story began in Accra and brought him to Grand Rapids in 2004. At Calvin, he studied inorganic chemistry under Doug Vander Griend, a professor who became a trusted adviser and mentor. Today, Bediako is an associate professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.

JOURNEY TO THE TOP

Bediako spent the year after graduation working in industry before beginning a PhD program in electrochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He shifted his doctoral work to Harvard when his research adviser, world-renowned chemist Daniel Nocera, took a position there.

When he launched his career at UC Berkeley, Bediako broadened his disciplinary focus to include physics. “What I’ve been pursuing is a fusion of two areas, bringing my chemical training from Calvin, MIT, and Harvard and applying it to problems at the interface of chemistry and physics,” he says.

THE FRONTIER OF ENERGY DEVELOPMENT 

Bediako conducts his innovative research at the Bediako Lab, where he and his team develop and experiment with ultra-thin, two-dimensional materials that have the potential to make energy transfer and storage processes more efficient.

“When you take what we call a bulk crystal and you thin that crystal down so that it’s just a few layers thick into a single sheet or a few sheets of atoms, the way that material or crystal behaves can be radically different from the way it behaves when it’s many layers thick,” Bediako explains. “We want to understand how new properties emerge from these atomic building blocks.”

BETTER DOESN’T MEAN MORE

Bediako hopes his team’s discoveries will support the development of new technologies that can lower energy consumption and minimize waste of natural resources.

Rapid technological advances, like artificial intelligence, have accelerated energy demand and consumption, but Bediako believes better does not just mean more. “We need new materials, new fundamental building blocks that will allow us to design the next generation of improved devices that can meet these rising demands.”

Bediako and his team also see the potential in their research to improve renewable energy storage. “Science has really advanced in harvesting renewable energy sources, such as solar energy, but efficient storage remains a challenge.”

A FORMATIVE TIME

At the Bediako Lab, student and post-doctoral researchers at all levels and across multiple disciplines—including chemistry, applied physics, and material science—work on designing these new, atomically thin, two-dimensional materials.

First year research opportunities at Calvin shaped Bediako’s own passion for mentoring learners through hands-on experiences. He describes his time in Professor Vander Griend’s lab as “liberating,” “exciting,” and “absolutely formative.”

“I see how much of a difference these opportunities can make in a young scientist’s life. I carried that with me,” he says.

Studying in the U.S. far from home presented challenges, but Bediako says on campus, “there was a family feeling. I think that’s something extremely special, and it  makes it equally difficult to put my finger on just one person who influenced me, but I think that’s the beauty of a place like Calvin.”