Professor Lesley Yellowlees explains how chemists can contribute effectively to solar energy in this special Ri talk. Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe Watch the Q&A here: http://youtu.be/587oQ_qf_wg With a growing global population, an international challenge is to find sustainable sources of energy. Professor Lesley Yellowlees explains how chemists can contribute effectively to solar energy. She describes the research she and her team have undertaken in Edinburgh to characterise dye sensitised solar cells using techniques such as UV/Vis and EPR spectroelectrochemistry. Lesley Yellowlees is the Professor of Inorganic Electrochemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh.Her research centres on electron transfer reactions, which are vital to many diverse areas of chemistry such as solar energy conversion, catalytic processes, synthetic procedures, and chemical biology pathways. Her research group are particularly interested in the redox properties of compounds. She completed her higher education at the University of Edinburgh, gaining a BSc in Chemical Physics, and PhD in Inorganic Electrochemistry. Since then, her work has brought her international recognition with numerous awards including the IUPAC’s Distinguished Women Chemistry/Chemical Engineering Award. She is the Immediate Past President, having been the first female president of the Royal Society for Chemistry. This event was filmed at the Royal Institution on 31 October 2014. The Ri is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ri_science and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/royalinstitution and Tumblr: http://ri-science.tumblr.com/ Our editorial policy: http://www.rigb.org/home/editorial-policy Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter