Adam Wold, a fourth-year Chemistry & Biochemistry major and one of UNC Asheville’s 2025 McCullough Fellows, is charting a course for greener, more accessible solar energy solutions through a collaborative research project that bridges classroom innovation and community impact. Working alongside faculty mentor Jeromy Rech, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and local partner Sugar Hollow Solar, Wold is helping lay the groundwork for a future where organic solar cells could enter the commercial solar industry, making flexible panels more widely available, portable, and adaptable across a variety of real-world settings. Through this work, the team is developing green-solvent solar materials that are safer to produce and help reduce the environmental footprint of solar panel manufacturing, work that recently earned Wold a Grand Prize for his research presentation at this year’s Appalachian Energy Summit.Wold, who transferred to UNC Asheville for his bachelor’s in Chemistry, showed an early aptitude for science dating back to his high school days. “It wasn’t until the spring semester of my junior year that I realized I was pretty good at it, and I have a decent amount of fun doing this,” recalls Wold.