Jef Poortmans

Scientific Director of the PV and Energy activities - imec

Biography

Dr. Jozef Poortmans received his degree in electronic engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit of Leuven, Belgium, in 1985. He joined the newly build Interuniversitary Micro-electronic Centre (IMEC) in Leuven where he worked on laser recrystallization of polysilicon and a-Si for SOI-applications and thin-film transistors. In 1988 he started his Ph. D study on strained SiGe-layers. Both the deposition and the use of these SiGe-alloys within the base of a heterojunction bipolar transistor were investigated in the frame of this study. He received his Ph. D. degree in June 1993. Afterwards he joined the photovoltaics group, where he became responsible for the group Advanced Solar Cells. He was involved in the start of imec-activities on thin-film crystalline Si solar cells, organic solar cells and III-V solar cells and became Department Director of the PV-department in 2003.  In 2008 he started up the Si-PV Industrial Affiliation Program and collected the investment funds to build up the S-line environment of imec.  As Program Director PV he built the industrial partnership active in the S-line.    Presently, he is Scientific Director of the PV and Energy activities of imec since 2013.  In the same year he was also appointed imec Fellow. He has been a Board Member of Eurec Agency and is presently member of the Steering Committee of the EU PV Technology Platform.  He also acted as General Chairman of the 21st European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference & Exhibition and of the SiliconPV 2012 Conference and has been active in the Scientific Committees of the leading PV-conferences.   Prof. J. Poortmans has authored or co-authored more than 500 papers that have been published in Conference Proceedings and technical journals.  Since 2008 he is part-time Professor at the K.U.Leuven, where he teaches courses on photovoltaics and materials in electrical engineering.  In 2013 he became also part-time Professor at University Hasselt where he teaches a course on analog electronics.