About

Helping to Grow the Solar Industry

Energy is vitally important for all living things – humans included, along with all our iPods, laptops, and other electronic gadgets. Every home, every business and town requires electricity – the entire modern age is powered by electricity. But where does the electricity come from? In most cases, it comes from polluting sources – fossil fuels – when instead it could be coming from clean sources of energy.

Solar is that clean source of energy. A solar panel can last upward of 50 years without significant power output decline, whereas during that time a normal fossil fuel-burning power plant would require repairs, replacements, and other maintenance activities that require further energy and resources to perform. Once that solar panel is made, no sunny day will go by without the panel outputting energy for our use. Clean, free energy – that is the revolutionary promise of solar.

Solar is expensive, unless you know where to look.  That’s where we can help.  By posting where the lowest prices are for the highest quality products, we can help drive competition to lower the cost of solar.  We post about solar products to attract shoppers to buy more, thus lowering the cost of production and making those products more widely available so more people can afford them.

We also provide education on solar power, in hopes of driving more people into the solar business.  More providers and more customers = growth of the industry, which will bring clean energy more quickly to everyone.

About the Author – Educational Background

• M.S. in Ecology, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2009
  - Recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Predoctoral Fellowship, a 3-year award
  - Graduate advisor: Dr. Aaron Moody, Dept. of Geography, UNC Landscape Ecology and Biogeography Lab

• B.S. in Biology, Duke University, 2003
  - Recipient of the Reginaldo Howard Scholarship, a 4-year full tuition merit and leadership award

• Diploma, NC School of Science and Mathematics, May 1999
  - Member of the US physics team to Vienna, Austria for the 12th International Young Physicists’ Tournament

Professional Experience

Resume: Click here for the complete version.

• Co-Manager, HiViz.com, 2004-present
• Teaching Assistant, Biology 25, Duke University, Durham, NC. 2003-2004
• Research Assistant, Johnsen Lab, Duke University Biology Department, Durham, NC. 2003-2004
• Webmaster, Duke University, Durham, NC. 2002-2004
• Graphics Consultant, RGG Architects, Durham, NC. 2002-2003. Contract position.
• Webmaster/IT Intern, John Hope Franklin Center, Duke University, Durham, NC. 2000-2002
• Computer Support/Training, NC School of Science and Mathematics, Durham, NC. 2000.

Research

• Thesis Research (UNC; Dr. Aaron Moody)
  Searched the literature to gather data on Arctic vegetation distribution, and employed this data in ArcGIS to  validate an Arctic biome model of vegetation changes due to a climate change scenario.

• NASA Project (UNC; Dr. Aaron Moody)
  Supported my lab’s NASA-funded project to learn what environmental factors might increase or decrease plant species richness across a 3-state area.

• Current Issues in Ecology (UNC; seminar)
  Responsible for performing land use/land cover change (LULC) and climate change analyses of the Uwharrie National Forest area using Landsat imagery, to provide input to the U.S. Forest Service’s new management plan for the forest.

• Photobiology/Visual Ecology (Duke; Dr. Sonke Johnsen)
  Responsible for equipment setup and field data collection for a research project in visual ecology – to measure nighttime skylight variations

• Physics (Granular Materials)
  Dr. Robert Behringer, Department of Physics, Duke University, Durham, NC. 1999. (read publication) (also here)

• Cancer Biology
  Dr. Barry Goz,  Department of Pharmacology, UNC – Chapel Hill, NC. Summer 1998. The effects of wortmannin and 5-fluoro-2′-deoxyuridine on cancerous Chinese hamster ovary cells.

Publications

Winters, D. 2009. Arctic Plant Migration by 2100: Comparing Predictions with Observations. Master’s thesis.

Vanel, L., Howell, D., Clark, D., Behringer, R.P., Clement, E. (1999). Memories in sand: Experimental tests of construction history on stress distributions under sandpiles. Phys. Rev. E 60 (5): R5040-R5043.