Prof. Dr. Jozef (Jef) Poortmans

imec, Leuven, Belgium

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. Within this frame he started up the activity about thin-film crystalline Si solar cells at IMEC and he has been coordinating several European Projects in this domain during the 4th and 5th European Framework Program. At the moment he is Scientific Director of the PV-activities at imec . As a Board Member of EUREC agency and member of the Steering Committee of the EU PV Technology Platform he became involved in the preparation of the Strategic Research Agenda for Photovoltaic Solar Energy Technology of the European PV Technology Platform. He also acted as General Chairman of the 21st European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference & Exhibition and of the SiliconPV 2012 Conference.
Dr. Poortmans has authored or co-authored more than 500 papers that have been published in Conference Proceedings and technical journals. Since 2008 he is also part-time Professor at the K.U.Leuven, where he teaches courses on photovoltaics and materials in electrical engineering.