Brian otis and babak parviz biography

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September 8, 2009

You’ve heard about flower power. What about tree power? It turns out that it’s there, in small but measurable quantities.

There’s enough power in trees for University of Washington researchers to run an electronic circuit, according to results to be published in an upcoming issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Transactions on Nanotechnology.

“As far as we know this is the first peer-reviewed paper of someone powering something entirely by sticking electrodes into a tree,” said co-author Babak Parviz, a UW associate professor of electrical engineering.

A study last year from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that plants generate a voltage of up to 200 millivolts when one electrode is placed in a plant and the other in the surrounding soil.

Those researchers are working with a company, Voltree, that holds patents for