Executive Management

Dr. Jay Ashjaee

Dr. Ashjaee is the Vice President of Engineering at SoloPower and is responsible for managing processing equipment hardware and software. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and has been a technology development executive for over 20 years. Dr. Ashjaee has managed product development and engineering organizations in different branches of semiconductor processing equipment such as photoresist processing, plasma etch, copper electroplating, and copper planarization. He has made extensive contribution to equipment design and to engineering and manufacturing practices and holds 15 US patents related to processing equipment hardware and software.

Prior to joining SoloPower, Dr. Ashjaee served as the Vice president of Engineering and Manufacturing at ASM NuTool. At NuTool, he oversaw development of system architecture for NuTool products and implemented the elimination of in-house equipment integration, a practice that was a pioneering step in the industry at the time, but has been widely accepted and used in recent years. Prior to NuTool, he served at Lam Research Corporation as a Business Unit Vice President and at Silicon Valley Group Corporation as a Director of New Product Development. Dr. Ashjaee is the inventor of the proximity or conduction heating of semiconductor wafers via thin gas media, a concept that has been universally used in photoresist processing for over two decades and also adopted in other wafer heating or cooling applications.

Ryan Benton

Mr. Benton is the Chief Financial Officer. He has over 15 years of diverse financial experience. His experience includes serving as Corporate Controller of a public technology company with over $600m in annual sales, working with fast-growth small companies, and leading large-scale ERP implementations. Prior to joining SoloPower, he worked as a financial consultant to ASMA and to NuTool corporations. In this role he made key contributions in the areas of financial reporting, planning and analysis, SOX remediation, and systems integrations.

Rod Langley

Mr. Langley has over 23 years experience in senior level manufacturing at Micron Corporation, a leader in manufacturing of semiconductor memory products. Mr. Langley has focused on project planning and the operational practice of an R&D pilot line in large scale - high volume manufacturing environments. He has extensive experience in next generation product development and managing high performance teams in large-scale wafer manufacturing operations. Mr. Langley has 26 patents in the semiconductor field, including on plasma etch process, wet process and various hardware innovations.

Dr. Rommel Noufi

Dr. Noufi is Vice President of Research at SoloPower. He received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Texas in Analytical and Physical Chemistry. He made significant contributions in the fields of PV, electrodeposition, photoconversion and superconducting thin films. Dr. Noufi, as a Principal Scientist/Group Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), lead a group of scientists, engineers and technicians in the field of thin film PV with emphasis on CIGS and CdTe material systems. He and his team hold the World record light-to-electricity conversion efficiencies of 19.9% and 16.5%, respectively, for thin film CIGS and CdTe solar cells. In addition to his research activities, Dr. Noufi advised NREL management on the R&D direction of the national lab, represented NREL at scientific forums world wide, led national teams on thin film PV projects, partnered with industry through CRADAs to enable advances in pilot manufacturing of PV modules and played an important role in transferring NREL developed technology to industry. Before NREL, Dr. Noufi was a Senior Scientist at Rockwell International Science Center, where he performed research on photoelectrochemistry of semiconductors, charge transfer mechanisms at the semiconductor-liquid interface, electrodeposition of metal oxides, and photoelectrochemical solar cells. Dr. Noufi has been the Chair and Organizer of various PV related conferences and symposiums, and has edited multiple volumes of proceedings for these meetings. He received H.M. Hubbard Award in 1993 in recognition of outstanding leadership in science and technology management and in furthering NREL as the nation’s foremost renewable energy laboratory. His other awards include Popular Science magazine pick of "The Best of What's New in Science and Technology" in 1993 and NREL's outstanding Achievement award in 1982. Dr. Noufi has over 140 papers and holds twelve patents.

Dr. Mustafa Pinarbasi

Dr. Mustafa Pinarbasi is an executive technologist with over 20 years of experience in thin film materials and processing. He received his Masters and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he studied the processing and properties of hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin films. He joined IBM San Jose in 1989 and worked on thin film processing and material properties for magnetic head devices. His work included development and product introduction of many innovative processes and thin film structures as well as introduction of ion beam sputter deposition technology to the magnetic head industry. His work has been recognized with many awards including IBM Corporate Award in 2000. The same year he was promoted to Distinguished Engineer position for his continuing technical contributions. He moved to Hitachi GST in 2003 where he managed advanced technology group and lead advanced technology projects. Dr. Pinarbasi has authored many articles and holds over 110 US patents and has over 60 pending patent applications.