PERCISTAND digital scientific workshop – Registration open for June 9th, 2021

Neethi Rajagopalan

Neethi Rajagopalan is a researcher in the Sustainable Built Environment unit at VITO and works on topics related to the environmental impacts of PV and batteries and building materials. Her focus is primarily on life cycle assessment and life cycle costing of various energy related technology. Currently, she is involved in the European research projects (under the EU Research & Innovation programme Horizon 2020) CIRCUSOL, SPIDER, PERCISTAND and NAIMA.  She was also involved in Ecodesign Batteries follow-up technical study using the Product Environmental Footprint method which concluded in January 2020. She received her PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, a Masters in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University and a Bachelor in Civil Engineering from the University of Madras.

Fabrizio Gota

Fabrizio Gota is a doctoral researcher in Ulrich W. Paetzold’s ‘Advanced Optics and Materials for Next Generation Photovoltaics’ group at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

He has completed his international Master of Science in Nanotechnology for ICTs, a joint program between Polytechnic University of Turin, Grenoble INP and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Currently in his doctoral studies he is working on light management and energy yield modelling for perovskite-based tandem photovoltaics.

Bart Vermang

Bart Vermang received the M.Sc. degree in physics from the University of Ghent and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Leuven, both in Belgium. He performed his M.Sc. final research project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where his interest in renewable energy was triggered. He obtained a Ph.D. for research in silicon photovoltaics (PV) at Imec – Belgium, followed by 2 personal Postdoctoral fellowships to work on thin film PV. A Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship to move to the University of Uppsala in Sweden, and a fellowship from the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO) to return to Imec. In 2016, Bart acquired a European Research Council (ERC) starting grant and became professor at Hasselt University in Belgium. Currently he is also coordinating Horizon 2020 project PERCISTAND, with a consortium of 13 international partners and a budget of 5 million EUR. Bart is member of the Operational Board of EnergyVille, the Belgian Energy Research Alliance (BERA) board, the editorial board of the Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells journal (Elsevier), and the Young Academy of Flanders.

Alessandro Martulli

Alessandro Martulli received his Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Engineering and Management at Polytechnic University of Bari (Italy) and later obtained his master from University of Groningen (Netherlands) with Energy and Environmental Sciences, with a specialization in renewable energy technologies environmental and economic assessments. In 2020, he started a PhD by joining the Environmental Economics research group within the Centre for Environmental Science at Hasselt University (Belgium). He is currently working in the EU Horizon 2020 project PERCISTAND, and his main activities involve carrying out techno-economic analysis (TEA) of the development of perovskite/CIS tandem PV technologies. His research also comprises the assessment of PVs End-of-Life and the improvement of TEA methodological framework applied to PV technologies with machine learning methods

César Omar Ramirez

Originally from Mexico, and with a chemical engineering bachelor’s degree, César Omar pursued his higher education at the Polytechnic Institute of Scientific Research and Technology in San Luis, Mexico. At the physics and advanced materials department, he was awarded his master’s degree for his work on the photo-physical secondary doping mechanisms of opto-electric thin films. His academic interest took him to spend two semesters at The University of Arizona (U of A), AZ, USA as research and teacher assistant under the supervision of Prof. Neal Armstrong. In an attempt to augment his technical training on thin films and photovoltaic (PV) technologies he started a doctorate program, through an awarded grant, at Friedrich Alexander University (FAU), in Germany in 2014. Specifically, his PhD main focus was to target high efficiencies through multi-junction solar cells. This work awarded him his PhD degree, in the fall of 2018, for his thesis entitled “Efficient perovskite tandem solar-cells: Structure, optimization and novel concepts”, under the supervision of Prof. Christoph J. Brabec and the external supervision of Prof. Bernd Rech.

Academically, his research interests include the understanding of the interfacial dynamics between the selective layers and the photoactive material, light management for achieving highly infrared-transmissive layouts as top-cells and numerous novel device designs for high performance tandem devices. His scientific curiosity allowed him to join efforts with world-class institutions across the globe (Harvard University, Trina solar, UNSW, HZB, etc.) in order to constantly redefine the state-of-the-art efficiency and fundamental understanding. Currently he works as research and development scientist at NICE solar energy situated in Germany.