A University of Louisville student-led startup has won $200,000 in a prestigious U.S. Department of Energy competition focused on next-generation energy technologies and now will compete for an additional $500,000. SoFab Inks LLC was founded by UofL graduate students Blake Martin, Peter Armstrong and Sashil Chapagain, who won DOE's American-Made Perovskite Startup Prize for technology they helped develop along with UofL Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research investigators Thad Druffel and Craig Grapperhaus. SoFab Inks is one of only three companies currently moving on to the final stage of the competition. Solar panels today are typically made of single-crystal silicon, which requires expensive processing using clean room environments. The American-Made Perovskite Startup Prize is designed to accelerate the use of perovskite crystalline semiconductor materials that can be produced using simpler known printing techniques, resulting in improved efficiency, durability and affordab
A whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former attorney at the University of Louisville alleges she was demoted and punished for reporting attempted extortion by an assistant basketball coach, and that she experienced pushback from then-President Neeli Bendapudi for doing so.