On February 2, Aisha Alobaid defended her PhD thesis proposal on the topic of conversion of solar energy to storable hydrogen and oxygen. At first glance, this seems to be a research area outside of the scope of work normally done by our group, but in reality it is not: thin-film solar-active materials are used for the water splitting process and reaction graph analysis of the aqueous-solution  reactions that take place in this system put it squarely into the domain of what we do. Aisha is pursuing both experimental and computational approaches to designing these processes and anticipates graduating with her PhD in 2018.