Dr. Dan Doble
Group Leader, PV Module Innovation
Dr. Doble has been leading the CSE's PV Module Innovation team since 2008. His eight years of industry experience include two years at Massachussetts-based Evergreen Solar, where he successfully led a new material manufacturing project from R&D lab to factory production, and six years at semiconductor equipment manufacturer Novellus Systems leading projects in engineering R&D, new product development and new process development.
He completed his MA (Double First, Cambridge) and PhD (Nottingham) in chemistry in the UK, before "crossing the pond" to undertake a post-doctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley.
Dr. Kurt Roth
Group Leader, Building Energy Efficiency
Dr. Roth has headed the CSE's Building Efficiency efforts since January 2009. Prior to this, he was a Principal Engineer at TIAX LLC, where he led several DOE-funded studies to assess the energy savings and commercialization potentials of HVAC, building controls and diagnostics, toplighting, and IT technologies.
In addition, he has conducted a number of analyses of building energy consumption, including consumption from commercial and residential IT as well as consumer electronics. He has presented the results of these studies at a number of conferences and meetings, and has authored more than sixty "Emerging Technology" articles for the ASHRAE Journal. Dr. Roth received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees from MIT.
Mr. Nolan Browne
Managing Director
Browne co-founded the CSE in February of 2008. He previously worked for Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar, where he was responsible for developing business relationships around Evergreen's advanced module and expansion efforts. Prior to this, Browne served as a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, where he started up CERA's Clean Energy Study.
As a student at MIT, he co-founded the MIT Energy Conference and was involved with a number of energy startups, including GreenFuel Technologies. As an entrepreneur, Browne has founded two successful for-profit companies to date. He holds an MA and BA in International Economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Christian Hoepfner
Director of Technical Operations
Hoepfner joined the Fraunhofer CSE in 2009 to oversee the implementation of the directorship's vision and to manage the day-to-day operations of the scientific and engineering staff. He comes to Fraunhofer with more than 10 years of experience in engineering management and product marketing roles, mostly in the Boston area. Most recently, he was the Vice President of Product Marketing and Management at Luminus Devices, a MIT start-up company. There, he was responsible for the successful commercialization of Luminus' high power light emitting diodes into the consumer electronics industry, and for introducing energy-efficient lighting products to the market.
Prior to this, he worked at LNL Technologies, Bandwidth Semiconductor, and Spire in a wide range of technology areas, including lasers, photo detectors, III-V semiconductor device design and processing, planar light guides, and chemical vapor deposition. Christian received his PhD from the Free University Berlin, Germany, for work in thin film photovoltaics.