Ajeet Rohatgi Named as NAI Fellow

Ajeet Rohatgi has been named as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He is part of the Class of 2015 NAI Fellows, consisting of 168 leaders of invention and innovation, to be inducted on April 15, 2016 during the Fifth Annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

A Regents’ Professor at Georgia Tech, Rohatgi has been on the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) faculty since 1985. He has led the University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaics Research and Education since 1992, where he conducts industry-relevant research to make solar energy cost-effective by developing low-cost, high efficiency silicon cells. The Center was the first of its kind in the United States and was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE).

Rohatgi is the founder and chief technology officer of Atlanta-based Suniva, the first silicon solar cell manufacturing company in the southeastern United States. Established in 2007, Suniva produces the highest efficiency, best in class silicon solar cells in the nation, using the low-cost technologies developed in Rohatgi’s lab at Georgia Tech.

An IEEE Fellow, Rohatgi holds the John H. Weitnauer, Jr. Chair at Georgia Tech and is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. He has published over 500 technical papers and holds 19 U.S. and 22 international patents–seven of which have been licensed to Suniva.

For his longstanding contributions to photovoltaics (PV), Rohatgi has been recognized with many honors, including the Georgia Tech Outstanding Achievement in Research Innovation Award, the Environmental Protection Agency Climate Protection Award, the American Solar Energy Society Hoyt Clark Hottel Award, the IEEE Cherry Award, and the U.S. DOE/National Renewable Energy Laboratory Rappaport Award.

Rohatgi was named a Champion of PV by Renewable Energy World Magazine in 2010. He has served on several solar energy technical advisory committees and on the editorial boards of Solar Cell Journal, Solar Energy Material and Solar Cells, and Progress in Photovoltaics.