The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently named leaders in the renewable energy field as center directors.The appointments are as follows:
Paul Basore, director of NREL's Materials Applications and Performance Center
Basore has contributed to the establishment of photovoltaic research & development facilities on three continents, including work at Sandia National Laboratories on multicrystalline silicon; a pilot line for Pacific Solar in Sydney, Australia; the CSG Solar factory in Germany; a photovoltaic solar laboratory for the Renewable Energy Corporation of Norway and a PV research and development lab in Silicon Valley for Hanwha.Basore earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has contributed to world-record solar cell efficiencies and is the developer of widely used software tools for solar cell simulation and solar cost estimations.
Dave Mooney to lead Strategic Energy Analysis Center
Mooney developed the prototype for NREL's System Advisor Model that is used widely around the nation to estimate the potential and costs of renewable energy projects. He has led initiatives in energy integration, energy-efficient buildings, and solar energy. He was a member of the core team that developed the Energy Department's Solar American Initiative (SAI) to make solar energy cost competitive with other forms of energy. SAI aims to achieve the goal through partnerships and strategic alliances with industry, universities, federal agencies, states, utilities, and the building industry.Mooney has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Arkansas, where his dissertation was on the rapid recrystallization of thin-film semiconductors for photovoltaics.
Nancy Haegel to head Materials Science Center
Haegel previously served as director of the Center for Materials Science at the Navy Postgraduate School, where she also was distinguished professor of physics. She earned her Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Haegel said NREL's Materials Science Center has an outstanding, nationally recognized staff working to advance materials science discovery and problem-solving for current and next-generation photovoltaics and other renewable and energy-efficient technologies.
Jao van de Lagemaat, director of Chemistry and Nanoscience
Van de Lagemaat earned his Ph.D. from the University of Utrecht. His work on quantum dots, exciton dynamics, and charge transport and recombination in dye-sensitized solar cells have been seminal in the field.
Pete Sheldon to head Research Operations Center
Sheldon previously served as deputy director of the National Center for Photovoltaics. He has more than 35 years of experience in photovoltaics research and development and has held numerous positions leading photovoltaic focused measurements and characterization, CdTe, and III-V research programs.
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NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.