EU PVSEC International Scientific Advisory Committee

Piotr Szymanski hails from Warsaw, Poland. He studied physics at Warsaw University, and went on to complete a PhD in experimental particle physics at the Institute for Nuclear Studies in Swierk, Poland. He worked as a research associate at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK and the J-W Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main, Germany as well as a Staff Member at the European Organization for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. He holds a habilitation in physics and is the author or co-author of more than 200 scientific papers in various fields of particle physics. He was also Head of the Department for Interdisciplinary Applications of Physics at the Institute for Nuclear Studies in Swierk, Poland.

Dr. Szymanski was Director of Nuclear Safeguards at the European Commission in Luxembourg, which is responsible for the verification and inspection of the non-diversion of nuclear materials at all civil nuclear installations within the European Union.
Nominated JRC Director on 1 July 2016, he leads the Directorate for Energy, Transport and Climate. The Directorate brings together about 350 staff based in Petten, Ispra and Seville.

Dr. Verónica Bermúdez is the Senior Research Director of the Energy Center at QEERI (Qatar Environment Research Institute, part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) under Qatar Foundation). She is leading scientific and technological research, development and innovation at QEERI in the field of Energy, while addressing the impact of climate change and developing sustainable development solutions in a Net-Zero Carbon emissions scenario.
Prior to joining the organization in 2018, she was Acting General Manager of the Technology Division of the Atsugi Research Center at Solar Frontier KK in Japan. She has also hold a position of Expert at EDF R&D, Senior Scientist at NEXCIS (start-up) and Head of the Optoelectronic Characterization Laboratory at IRDEP (EDF) in France, between others. She is in the Advisory Board of a number of entities and provides consultancy and high level strategic technology commercialization advice to global companies and small companies alike. The impact of her research has been acknowledged by the invitation to give keynote and plenary talks at different international events, as well as with the reception of several prestigious awards, including the 2007 International Schieber Prize, the Research and Development Leader of the Year from the Women in New Energy Leadership Awards 2022, between others. She is an Associate Editor in Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy also IEEE Senior Fellow and is actively engaged in promoting science among the youth, with a focus on STEM for women.

Dr. Bermúdez is an internationally recognized expert authoring or co-authoring more than 120 scientific papers in renown journals, including Nature, Nature Energy and Science in clean and sustainable energy and in particular in photovoltaic materials and technologies in the whole value chain. She has extensive experience in laboratory to industry technology transfer in the field photovoltaics in almost the whole value chain and in particular in materials development, devices and processes scale up, power plant operations best practices, reliability, degradation and impact of weather conditions on performance ratio. Recently she is been specialized in PV technologies and solutions for desert environment.

Gabriele C. Eder studied technical chemistry and received her doctorate from the Vienna University of Technology. After working at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, she worked for three years as a lecturer at the University of Twente (Netherlands). Gabriele Eder gained industrial experience at NBG Special Coatings GmbH (Austria) in the research and development department, in production management and as head of the development of "siliconized papers and films". Since 2005, she has been a researcher and project manager in the field of surface technology and material analysis at Austrian Research Institute for Chemistry and Technology (OFI, Vienna), where she built up the photovoltaics business unit. The focus of the research activities is on material characterization and development, aging, degradation and failure analysis, sustainability issues and reliability tests of PV materials, components and modules. In addition, Gabriele Eder is active in the international expert groups of the IEA PVPS Task 13 (Reliability and performance of photovoltaic systems) and Task 15 (Building-integrated PV). She is a board member of the Austrian Technology Platform Photovoltaics (TPPV).

Paolo Frankl is the Head of the Renewable Energy Division (RED) at the International Energy Agency (IEA), which he joined in summer 2007. In this role Dr. Frankl coordinates the Division’s activities, encompassing the status and progress of renewable energy technologies; renewable energy policies and markets; and system-integration issues. A physicist by training, Dr. Frankl holds a Ph.D in energy and environmental technologies from the University of Rome. Previous positions held were in academia and in private Italian consultancy firms researching renewable energy, life cycle assessment and eco-labeling.

Maria GETSIOU is a senior expert in the Renewable Energy Sources Unit of the European Commission's Directorate General for Research and Innovation. Since 2008 she is responsible for the R&I policy development and the management of respective projects in the field of Photovoltaics. She has been working as a European Commission officer since 2001 on research, innovation and entrepreneurship policies. Prior to joining the EC she worked in the private sector and research institutes on high performance polymers and textiles. She holds an MSc degree in composite and polymers engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium and an MSc in chemical engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Stefan W. Glunz received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, in 1995. He is professor for Photovoltaic Energy Conversion at the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg and the director of the division “Photovoltaics –Research” at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Freiburg, Germany. The research focus of the division includes the development and characterization of high-efficiency crystalline silicon, III-V, organic and perovskite solar cells. In 2008, he received the Eni Award for the promotion of science and technology in the field of renewable energies and in 2014 the Becquerel Award for Outstanding Merits in Photovoltaics.

Nancy M. Haegel is a senior research advisor in the Materials, Chemical and Computational Sciences Directorate at NREL and Director of the National Center for Photovoltaics. Her research interests are in electronic materials and devices, with emphasis on novel materials and characterization, carrier transport, and infrared detection. She has also led international efforts in promoting the role of PV in the future energy economy. Haegel joined NREL in 2014, after 25 years in academia, with the last ten at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California where she was a Distinguished Professor in the Physics Department. She received her BS degree in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD in Materials Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author or co-author of ~ 160 publications, a Fellow of APS and AAAS, and has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.

Robert Kenny holds a Bachelor's degree in electronic engineering and a PhD for research in the field of fibre optic devices. He has been a scientific researcher at the Renewables and Energy Efficiency Unit of the Joint Research Centre in Ispra (Italy) since 2001 as part of the European Solar Test Installation, ESTI. He is working in the field of outdoor module measurement, energy rating, and characterisation and measurement issues related to novel photovoltaic technologies. He contributes to standards development within Technical Committee 82 of the IEC.

Stefan Nowak is an experimental physicist by training and Managing Director of NET Nowak Energy & Technology Ltd., a Swiss consultancy specialized in the area of renewable energy, energy and resource efficiency. His biography is characterised by a continuous evolution from research to technology and innovation management. He has broad technological and market expertise which cover activities in communication, technology management and policy with a strong emphasis on international cooperation. Until 2017, Stefan was for many years Programme Manager of the Swiss Photovoltaic RTD Programme. Stefan is active in leading positions of European and global networks of photovoltaics. He acts as co-ordinator of the SOLAR-ERA.NET consortium, a European network of national and regional funding organisations and RTD and innovation programmes in the field of solar electricity generation, supported by the Horizon 2020 Programme. Stefan is also Swiss Alternate Delegate in the Executive Committee of the Photovoltaic Programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA PVPS TCP) – from 2001 to 2021, Stefan was chairman of this important global cooperation programme. In his different international roles, Stefan Nowak received the 2017 Becquerel Prize for outstanding merits in photovoltaics.

Rutger Schlatmann heads the Solar Energy Division at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and is the founding director of its technology transfer institute PVcomB. He is also full professor for solar photovoltaics technology at the Hochschule fuer Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin. Before coming to Berlin, the Dutch physicist worked as staff scientist at Akzo Nobel and R&D manager for solar cell company HyET Solar, a joint venture between Akzo Nobel and Shell Solar before being sold to Vattenfall/Nuon.
Since 2022, he is also Chairman of the European Technology and Innovation Platform Photovoltaics, an advisory committee to the European Commission, of which he has been a member since 2014.

Wim Sinke (1955) is Program Development Manager at TNO Energy Transition, Petten, The Netherlands. He studied experimental physics at Utrecht University, where he graduated in 1981. He did PhD research at the FOM-Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) in Amsterdam and received a doctor’s degree from Utrecht University in 1985 for a thesis entitled “New physical processes for silicon solar cells”. From 1986 to 1987 he was a visiting scientist at the Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in Tokyo, where he worked on amorphous silicon. From 1987 to 1990 he was project leader at AMOLF and was involved in crystalline silicon solar cells and fundamental properties of amorphous silicon, as well as in ion and laser processing of semiconductors. In 1990 he joined the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands ECN to set up and lead a new group on photovoltaics. This group has grown to a size of 80 people and covers a broad range of topics: wafer-based crystalline silicon, thin-film silicon, and polymer solar cells and modules, including life-cycle and economic analyses.

Wim Sinke is a part-time professor at Utrecht University on “Science and Applications of Sustainable Energy Systems” and Chairman of the European Photovoltaic Technology Platform. He has received several prestigious awards, including the Royal Dutch Shell Prize 1999 for his contributions to the science and technology of silicon and solar cells and for his role in the creation and development of the Dutch programme on R&D and implementation of photovoltaics, and the European Becquerel Prize 2011 for outstanding merits in photovoltaics.

Professor Marko Topič is a Full Professor of Elec. Eng. at the University of Ljubljana and an Affiliated Professor at the Colorado State University. Since 2006 he is the Head of the Laboratory of Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics. Prof. Topič is a fellow of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, senior member of IEEE and OSA, member of Slovenian Academy of Engineering and since 2014 the chairman of European Technology and Innovation Platform Photovoltaics (http://etip-pv.eu). He has co-authored 2 books and more than 180 papers in peer-reviewed journals that are cited more than 7000 times.

Specialities: R&D Management, High-efficiency silicon and multijunction III-V solar cells (design, fabrication, and characterization), Manufacturing of high-efficiency solar cells, IBC, Concentrator PV systems, PV system development, Design and construction of clean room, PV manufacturing line, optoelectronic and power devices

Founder, Director, Amrock Pty Ltd, 2005 – 2012
Principal Scientist, Solar Systems Pty Ltd, 2005 – 2009
Manager, Origin Energy, 2002 – 2005 Director R&D, SunPower, 1994 – 2001
Manager R&D, SunPower Corporation, 1992 – 1994
Manager Solar Cells and Applications, SunPower Corporation, 1991 – 1992
Premier Assistant - Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium, 1987 – 1991
Visiting Scholar, Stanford University, 1987
Research Assistant, Universitécatholique de Louvain, 1979 – 1987

Eszter Voroshazi is the Head of PV modules & systems division at CEA and working on the campus of INES. She has in-depth expertise in innovative material and technology development for standard and integrated PV modules, and their reliability testing. She received her Master Degree in Engineering in 2008 from INSA de Rennes in France, and her PhD degree in 2012 from KU Leuven in Belgium for her work on reliability investigation of organic photovoltaic cells. Previously, she has been R&D Manager of PV cells, modules and systems groups at IMEC in Belgium. In parallel, she has been coordinating the Photovoltaics Activity in EneryVille and serving also as Secretary of the Industrial Advisory Board. She is currently involved in ETIP-PV as expert and as organizer of Metallization& Interconnection workshop. In the past she served as evaluator for international funding agencies (DOE, ANR, FWO) and was member of IEC standardization committee. She has published more than 100+ papers and proceedings.

Jonas Bergmiller is Managing Director Events & Knowledge Transfer at WIP Renewables Energies. He has been working in the fields of climate action and renewable energies for over 15 years. Previously, as Marketing and Communication Manager for Green City AG, he contributed to national and international renewable energy projects in Europe. In this framework he cooperated closely with ministries, municipalities and other organizations/associations.

As International Culture Manager, Jonas Bergmiller has designed various event formats. He is experienced in the field of project management, networking and knowledge transfer. In 2008, he was awarded the Environment Prize of his home city of Munich for his engagement towards sustainability.

Jon de Gregorio holds a Master of Science in Environmental Science from UAM, Madrid; a Master of Science in Built Environment with specialization in water resources engineering from KTH, Stockholm; a Master in Renewable Energies from UNED, Spain and an Executive Master in Business Administration from Universidad Pontificia de Comillas, Madrid.

He began his career in the field of the environmental engineering consultancy in Spain, with focus on waste and water treatment, recycling and sustainability, where he was for more than 6 years coordinator and manager of various types of projects and providing technical, legal and scientific advice to internal and external stakeholders.

In 2013 he started working in WIP Renewable energies as Project Manager and as expert in communication and dissemination of R&D findings. Based on his solid technical background he is as well Scientific coordinator of the EU PVSEC Technical Programme.