She has developed a simple, cheap way of producing solar cells in a pizza oven that could eventually bring power and light to the two billion people in the world who lack electricity.
Ms Kuepper is a PhD student and lecturer in the school of photovoltaic and renewable energy engineering at the University of NSW.
"I love working with passionate people who want to help address climate change and poverty by thinking and experimenting outside the square," she said.
Today's photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight to electricity are expensive and need sophisticated, "clean" manufacturing plants.
"So far, no cell manufacturing process has been found to be suitable for implementation in some of the least developed countries in the world," said Nicole.
Until now, only lasers and photolithography have been used. These are very expensive processes which necessitate clean environments and highly skilled people.
She explained that these processes did not ideally suit a developing country's production environment. Yet it was in these countries that the manufacture of solar cells could do the most good.
"Two billion people worldwide lack access to electricity," she said.
It was this statistic that fuelled her involvement in the creation of the iJet cell.
"I was fascinated by the fact that a third of the world's population has no access to renewable energy, especially when solar energy has the potential to do the most good."
She was also fascinated by the idea of appropriating technologies, "by taking something very high-tech and making it applicable to low-tech environments."
This is exactly what the new iJet cell design will do. It allows a simple, low-temperature, low cost processing sequence that could suit the manufacturing environment in developing countries.
Inkjet printing, aluminium spray and a pizza oven are used to create metal contacts to both the negative and positive sections of a solar cell in the simple, low temperature process.
"In a nutshell, we spray on nail polish, bake the cell, inkjet print something like nail polish remover in certain areas to create a pattern. We then dunk the cell in acid which eats through the nail polish where the ink has fallen, and hey presto you have a patterned solar cell without needing to use lasers or expensive and complex photolithographic equipment," said Ms Kuepper explaining the process, which is simple if you know what you are doing.
The design's reliance on this simple, low-temperature method opens the possibility for solar cells to be manufactured in the world's least developed countries.
Ms Kuepper has been working for two years on this project alongside her supervisor Professor Stuart Wenham, who discovered the use of inkjet printing in the production of solar cells.
"There is a clear link between access to electricity and standard of living. There is therefore an urgent need to address this inequality throughout the world, and photovoltaic technology is well positioned to be a part of the solution" she said.
Ms Kuepper was awarded the British Council Eureka Prize for Young Leaders in Environmental Issues and Climate Change and a $10,000 study tour to Britain.
She also won the People's Choice Award, in which almost 16,000 members of the public voted for their favourite scientist out of six finalists. Twenty Eureka Prizes worth $200,000 were awarded this week at a ceremony at Royal Randwick Racecourse.