Physicist Roy Clarke

Roy Clarke’s humble beginnings and selfless nature set him on a path that has helped countless people abroad and inspired equally important work closer to home. 

His efforts to deliver innovative, low-cost and reliable solar energy to low-income, underserved communities in Uganda and East Africa have changed and saved lives, standing as a powerful example of the University of Michigan’s impact globally and locally.

“I’ve written a lot of academic publications in my time, and I’ve always been really pleased to see them in print,” said Clarke, who recently retired as the Marcellus L. Wiedenbeck Collegiate Professor of Physics and professor of physics in LSA. “But the feeling you get from actually seeing someone in need benefitting from your expertise and your work, that is on a whole different level and is incredible. 

“That brings it home to you, how blessed we are to have that kind of expertise to have that education and to share it for the good of somebody’s lives. And sometimes it’s a life and death situation.”

A transformative venture

Clarke, who had been a U-M faculty member since 1979 and was named a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor in 2022, led the Applied Physics Program at the urging of former President James Duderstadt.

Soon after, he served as a research adviser to Peter Muhoro, a Ph.D. student who wanted to learn how renewable energy could be used in the developing world, especially in East Africa, where Muhoro had grown up before becoming a U.S. citizen.

Inspired by his student’s enthusiasm for this pioneering research, in the early 2010s Clarke decided to visit Uganda, and the experience was life-changing. 

“I decided that since I knew about energy and solar energy in particular, that I would use some of my expertise to see what changes could be possible in an area that is one of the poorest in the world,” he said. “I was introduced to a local midwife and she showed me around her clinic, and frankly, I was appalled that people could be working in this situation without electricity and more appalled that the patients were doing whatever they could to give birth with very little assistance.”

An outdoor class on solar power and light in Kasenda in western Uganda. (Photo courtesy Roy Clarke)

Meeting their needs

The “little thing” grew quickly as Clarke learned the many needs of the clinic and others like it through customer discovery, a process of identifying a target audience and their specific needs. 

“As far as I know, we’re the only people doing a research project to see what’s needed,” he said. “You have to do the customer discovery to be familiar with the staff’s needs because they’re the ones that are right there dealing with the issues.”

He extended the solar system to power outdoor security lights and a blood-testing microscope, and brought centrifuges so staff could separate serum from plasma.  

When the COVID-19 pandemic created a critical need for refrigerated vaccine storage, Clarke brought in thermo-electric refrigeration units that use little energy, have no compressor, and can operate independently in areas without a reliable electric grid.

Clarke said at the time the units were not readily available in the United States, but on a visit to the UK he found units imported from Sweden and took them to Uganda in his checked luggage. To date he’s brought about 20 of these to the region, and they’ve worked perfectly.

One of his proudest creations is a sort of solar-powered incubator to keep infants warm. Nighttime temperatures in the mountains can fall enough to threaten newborns, especially those born to mothers with HIV or AIDS or who are twins. 

“I developed a baby warmer, run off solar, which would be at a nice comfy temperature of 90, using very, very little electricity,” Clarke said. “I’m particularly proud of that because I never would have guessed in a million years I’d be thinking about incubators.”

The work is deeply personal to Clarke, whose grandson was born prematurely at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and spent the first month of his life in an incubator.

“I managed to make it possible that there could be access from a very, very poor clinic in a severely disadvantaged community to a device that could keep a baby alive and give it a chance,” he said. “That has no comparison to writing a paper that only a handful of people will read.”

Read the full article, complete with more photographs, on The University Record website.

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Physicist Roy Clarke