Congratulations to Lin Zhao for successfully defending his PhD on transparent silica aerogels for solar thermal energy applications. During his PhD, Lin established and validated a modeling framework to understand light transport in aerogel samples. This model enabled him to synthesize and optimize the recipe of silica aerogels to achieve low-scattering and high solar transmittance samples (up to 95% transmittance). Lin also experimentally demonstrated the use of the optimized silica aerogels in solar-thermal collectors, achieving stagnation temperatures beyond 265 °C with unconcentrated sunlight and saturated steam above 120 °C without any vacuum or selective surface. The improvements enabled by the low-scattering aerogels promote a new pathway of solar energy utilization for domestic, industrial, and power generation applications.