Technical Advisory Board Members

Dr. Ajeet Rohatgi

is a Regents’ Professor and a Georgia Power Distinguished Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering. He is the founding director of the University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaic Research and Education at Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. degree in Metallurgy and Material Science from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, in 1977. Before joining the Electrical Engineering faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1985, he was a Westinghouse Fellow at the Research and Development Center, Pittsburgh, PA. His current research interests include the understanding of impurity effects in silicon solar cells, rapid thermal processing of solar cells, design and fabrication of high efficiency cells on low-cost crystalline silicon materials, and design, performance and reliability of PV systems. As part of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Dr. Rohatgi and his group designed and installed the world’s largest grid-connected, roof-top PV system on the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center built for the Olympics. Dr. Rohatgi is an IEEE Fellow. He has published over two hundred and seventy technical papers in this field and has been awarded eleven patents. He is on the editorial board of several PV publications and served as general chair for the 28th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference in 2000. Dr. Rohatgi received the Westinghouse Engineering Achievement Award in 1985 and the Georgia Tech Distinguished Professor Award in 1996 for his research on high efficiency solar cells. In 2003 he received the IEEE PVSC William Cherry Award and the NREL/DOE Rappaport Award for his contributions to the field of Photovoltaics.

Dr. Raghu Bhattacharya

is a Senior Scientist/Team Leader at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. He received his Ph.D. degree from IIT, Kharagpur, India in the field of Electronic Materials in 1982. Before joining NREL, Dr. Bhattacharya held several research positions at The Weizmann Institute of Technology, The University of Texas at Arlington and Brooklyn College of CUNY and developed wet chemical processes for the deposition of a variety of thin film semiconductors that are important for energy conversion, storage and transportation. At NREL, Dr. Bhattacharya contributed to the research and development of the highest efficiency CIGS solar cells in the world and was the leader of an effort to develop a low cost CIGS electrodeposition technology. His current research interests include, in addition to the development of CIGS thin film solar cells, electrodeposition of thin films for superconductor applications and wet deposition methods for growing buffer layers for YBCO superconductors. He has published over one hundred and fifty technical papers in the field of processing PV materials and superconductors and has been awarded fourteen patents. He is the author of a book chapter. Dr. Bhattacharya served on various committees of technical conferences and delieved numerous invited lectures at international meetings.