UC Solar

Founding Faculty Roland Winston Remembered for Pioneering Solar Energy

February 18, 2025

Professor Winston with his research team and a solar collector.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Roland Winston, a pioneer in solar energy, engineering and physics, died Feb. 8 at the age of 88 at his home in Merced. A founding faculty member in the schools of Natural Sciences and Engineering at UC Merced, Winston also founded and directed the intercampus...

Researchers stand near a large solar collection panel.

UC Solar Projects Bringing Lower Costs, Renewable Energy to Industry, Commerce and Homes

Three big UC Solar projects are poised to be the next big breakthroughs in low-cost, accessible sustainable commercial and residential energy in California and far beyond. Researchers are building...

Understanding Why Designs Work — or Don’t — is Important

Just because a design works once doesn’t mean that the research and development is done. That’s why, Professor Sarah Kurtz argues in a new commentary in the prestigious journal...

UC Solar Awarded $1.1M Grant to Build Solar-Powered Water Purification Systems

UC Solar received a $1.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) to develop solar-thermal desalination technologies that reduce the cost of creating...

Potential California-New York Partnership Highlights UC Solar Symposium

UC Merced Professor Roland Winston will announce a proposed solar research partnership between the states of California and New York at the 2017 UC Solar Research Symposium, to be held Oct. 13 at the...

Professor Roland Winston and his student researchers

Our First Campus Was a Castle

The University of California, Merced, was established in 2005 — or so the story goes. The main campus officially opened in September of that year, but that particular reading of history elides...

Renewable Power Project Could Help Cut Food Processing Costs, Feed People and Animals

Researchers at UC Solar have developed and tested an innovative solar thermal-powered process for turning the pomace, or byproduct, of vegetable and fruit processing into reusable products,...

New UC Solar Project Produces Both Heat and Power

One of California’s greatest energy challenges is finding innovative ways to lower natural gas consumption to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. To help meet that...

Winston Feted for Golden Anniversary of Landmark Discovery

Fifty years ago this year, while a freshman faculty member in the University of Chicago Physics Department, Roland Winston published a paper introducing a new field he called nonimaging optics. In it...

Winston’s Innovative Project Highlights UC Solar Symposium

UC Merced Professor Roland Winston will deliver details on a groundbreaking hybrid solar collector he’s working on that simultaneously generates electricity and very-high-temperature heat at the...