It took nature millions of years to figure out how to turn energy from the sun into chemical energy that can be stored for a cloudy day – a process known as photosynthesis. It took Peidong Yang, a chemist at UC Berkeley, about 10 years to accomplish a similar feat with the help of semiconductor nanowires and bacteria. That’s one of the reasons he was awarded a “genius” fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation on Monday. Yang and…