PNNL

Molly Grear, a Coastal Sciences Ph.D. intern at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was named number 6 on Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 in Energy 2018.

She joins 29 other sub-30-year-old contemporaries such as founders and CEOs of energy technology companies as well as engineers and inventors of energy technologies.

The 28-year-old Grear is a doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. Grear was cited by Forbes on her work designing marine renewable energy devices with safer spinning blades that are proven not to harm marine mammals, such as harbor seals, porpoises, and Southern Resident Killer Whales. Her research entails characterizing the material properties of marine mammal skin and blubber using the same methods used to study the material properties of steel and concrete. She then uses this data to create a finite element analysis of a turbine blade striking an animal.

Grear and her colleagues have published their work in journals such as International Journal of Marine Energy, Wind Energy, Zoology, and Natural Hazards.

“I was surprised, as I thought the list was only for start-up companies and entrepreneurs,” Grear said. “It's exciting to see that academic research is viewed as innovative and creative, too.”