Dr. Jason Baxter enjoyed math and science in high school. During his time in high school, he worked on two projects for science courses that furthered his interest in engineering. The first project was to understand the various processes and equipment of an industrial wastewater treatment facility. The second project focused on specialty steel manufacturing at Carpenter Technology Corporation. Dr. Baxter toured their facility and was able to see the importance of processing technology and product specification that related to chemical engineering.
Dr. Baxter studied at the University of Delaware. Thanks to his high school experiences, he knew from the beginning that he would major in chemical engineering. He decided to pursue the BS thesis option, performing research on dye-sensitized solar cells at the Institute of Energy Conversion. He completed three summer internships during his college years at Lucent Bell Labs (formerly the Bell Telephone company) in their Optoelectronics Center. During his internship, he assisted with developing lasers, detectors, and multiplexers for optical communication. He worked in a clean room with both BS and PhD engineers that split time between manufacturing and R&D. Because of these experiences, he decided to pursue graduate school to obtain his Ph.D.
Dr. Baxter visited several Ph.D. programs that specialized in solar cell research. He decided to enter the Ph.D. program at UC Santa Barbara. Working with Professor Eray Aydil, he developed ZnO-nanowire dye-sensitized solar cells. During his time at UC Santa Barbara, Jason also met his wife, Joy. She was a first-year chemical engineering Ph.D. student when he first visited as a prospective graduate student. They started dating during the spring of Dr. Baxter’s first year there.
After graduate school, Dr. Baxter spent two years as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Chemistry Department at Yale University. He learned about ultrafast spectroscopy with pulsed lasers and developed their potential applications to solar cells.
Dr. Baxter started at Drexel University as Assistant Professor in 2007. He received tenure in 2013. Dr. Baxter’s current research focuses on solar energy conversion, including aspects of ultrafast spectroscopy, materials chemistry and processing, and device performance. His group seeks to understand relationships between processing, structure, material properties, and solar cell performance. He currently oversees three Ph.D. students working in his research group. All three graduate students work on solar energy conversion but with an emphasis on different materials and experimental techniques.
Dr. Baxter enjoys teaching at Drexel because he believes that Drexel students bring maturity to the classroom after their co-op experiences. They ask inquisitive questions and they are motivated to seek answers that relate to their eventual career paths.
Dr. Baxter was born and raised in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He currently lives in Havertown, PA with his wife Joy and their two children, Lauren and Ryan. In his spare time, he plays and coaches soccer and enjoys camping with his family.