Alta Devices CEO and leadership

Harry Atwater is currently Howard Hughes Professor and Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests center around two interwoven research themes: photovoltaics and solar energy; and plasmonics and optical metamaterials. Atwater and his group have been active in photovoltaics research for more than 20 years. Recently they have pioneered a new photovoltaic device, the silicon wire array solar cell, and have developed new fabrication approaches to III-V semiconductor multijunction cells, as well as making advances in plasmonic light absorber structures for III-V compound and silicon thin film. He is an early pioneer in surface plasmon photonics; he gave the name to the field of plasmonics in 2001. He has authored or co-authored over 200 publications, and his group’s developments in the solar and plasmonics field have been featured in Scientific American and in research papers in Science, Nature Materials, Nature Photonics and Advanced Materials.

Atwater received his S.B. (1981), S.M. (1983), and Ph.D. (1987) in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He currently serves as as Director of the DOE Energy Frontier Research Center on Light-Matter Interactions in Solar Energy Conversion(http://lmi.caltech.edu ) and was recently named Director of the Resnick Institute for Science, Energy and Sustainability, Caltech’s largest endowed research program focused on energy. Atwater is founder and chief technical advisor for Alta Devices, a venture-backed company in Santa Clara, CA developing a transformational high efficiency/low cost photovoltaics technology, and also founded Aonex Corporation, a compound semiconductor materials company, sold to Amberwave Systems.

Specialties: Photovoltaics and solar energy; and plasmonics and optical metamaterials.

Responsible for technology architecture, roadmap, and development, Gang has over 16 years of experience in compound semiconductor process and device development. Gang started his career at Vitesse Semiconductor where he led the development of many advanced technologies, including high-speed HBT/MESFET integrated circuits, detectors, lasers, and other photonic devices. He was also responsible for the development and production implementation of many high-volume integrated circuit manufacturing technologies and equipment. Prior to joining Alta Devices, he worked at Infinera and was responsible for process development of photonic integrated circuits for fiber-optic telecommunications equipment. Gang has a PhD in Physics from Caltech.

Jennifer Hsu is an Executive Assistant To Chief Executive Officer at Alta Devices and is based in Sunnyvale, California. She has worked as Administrative Assistant to SVP at Phoenix Technologies, Executive Assistant to CEO at Impax Laboratories Inc., and Executive Assistant to the Chairperson at TAIPEI FINANCIAL CENTRE CORP. Jennifer studied at Soochow University.

Harry Atwater is currently Howard Hughes Professor and Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests center around two interwoven research themes: photovoltaics and solar energy; and plasmonics and optical metamaterials. Atwater and his group have been active in photovoltaics research for more than 20 years. Recently they have pioneered a new photovoltaic device, the silicon wire array solar cell, and have developed new fabrication approaches to III-V semiconductor multijunction cells, as well as making advances in plasmonic light absorber structures for III-V compound and silicon thin film. He is an early pioneer in surface plasmon photonics; he gave the name to the field of plasmonics in 2001. He has authored or co-authored over 200 publications, and his group’s developments in the solar and plasmonics field have been featured in Scientific American and in research papers in Science, Nature Materials, Nature Photonics and Advanced Materials.

Atwater received his S.B. (1981), S.M. (1983), and Ph.D. (1987) in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He currently serves as as Director of the DOE Energy Frontier Research Center on Light-Matter Interactions in Solar Energy Conversion(http://lmi.caltech.edu ) and was recently named Director of the Resnick Institute for Science, Energy and Sustainability, Caltech’s largest endowed research program focused on energy. Atwater is founder and chief technical advisor for Alta Devices, a venture-backed company in Santa Clara, CA developing a transformational high efficiency/low cost photovoltaics technology, and also founded Aonex Corporation, a compound semiconductor materials company, sold to Amberwave Systems.

Specialties: Photovoltaics and solar energy; and plasmonics and optical metamaterials.

Harry Atwater is currently Howard Hughes Professor and Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests center around two interwoven research themes: photovoltaics and solar energy; and plasmonics and optical metamaterials. Atwater and his group have been active in photovoltaics research for more than 20 years. Recently they have pioneered a new photovoltaic device, the silicon wire array solar cell, and have developed new fabrication approaches to III-V semiconductor multijunction cells, as well as making advances in plasmonic light absorber structures for III-V compound and silicon thin film. He is an early pioneer in surface plasmon photonics; he gave the name to the field of plasmonics in 2001. He has authored or co-authored over 200 publications, and his group’s developments in the solar and plasmonics field have been featured in Scientific American and in research papers in Science, Nature Materials, Nature Photonics and Advanced Materials.

Atwater received his S.B. (1981), S.M. (1983), and Ph.D. (1987) in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He currently serves as as Director of the DOE Energy Frontier Research Center on Light-Matter Interactions in Solar Energy Conversion(http://lmi.caltech.edu ) and was recently named Director of the Resnick Institute for Science, Energy and Sustainability, Caltech’s largest endowed research program focused on energy. Atwater is founder and chief technical advisor for Alta Devices, a venture-backed company in Santa Clara, CA developing a transformational high efficiency/low cost photovoltaics technology, and also founded Aonex Corporation, a compound semiconductor materials company, sold to Amberwave Systems.

Specialties: Photovoltaics and solar energy; and plasmonics and optical metamaterials.