Our people
The Printed Solar Cells team of CSIRO Manufacturing in Clayton.
Dr Anthony Chesman
- Dr Anthony Chesman is the Nanomaterials and Devices Team Leader. After completing his PhD in inorganic chemistry at Monash University in 2010, Dr Chesman joined CSIRO as an Office of the Chief Executive Postdoctoral Research Fellow, and later became an ARC DECRA Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Both of these projects focused on the scale-up synthesis on earth abundant nanoparticles for incorporation into non-toxic photovoltaic devices. As a Senior Research Scientist, Dr Chesman is investigating nanostructured photocatalysts and photovoltaic devices with novel architectures for the next generation of renewable energy sources.
Dr Mei Gao
- Dr. Gao’s research interests cover several fields, including small molecule and polymer synthesis, surface modification for ophthalmic materials, and design and fabrication of high sensitive biosensors based on aligned carbon nanotube arrays and other nanomaterials. Dr Gao’ had worked in several industrial projects since she joined CSIRO. Her current focus is the development of low cost, lightweight, organic photovoltaics (OPV) and perovskite solar cells, responsible to lead, design, develop, characterize and fabricate of thin-film solar cells for achieving facile, solution processible, reproducible and printable high-performance devices. She has received more than 2400 citations from her publications and contributed to two patents.
Dr Doojin Vak
- Dr Doojin Vak is a team leader of the Printable Photovoltaics Team in CSIRO. He received his PhD on organic semiconductors for optoelectronic applications from GIST in Korea. He started research on printed photovoltaics at the University of Melbourne in 2007. Since he joined CSIRO in 2010, he has been working on various industrial processes for upscaling printed organic and perovskite photovoltaic devices. Dr. Vak has contributed to over 60 publications, has several patents, and is cited over 3000 times (scientific h-index of 31).
Dr Andrew Scully
- Andrew Scully completed his Ph.D. in the Physical Chemistry Department at the University of Melbourne, Australia, specialising in ultra-fast optical spectroscopy to probe the super-efficient energy dissipation in polymer UV stabilisers. A recipient of JSPS, ICI-Dulux and EPSRC Fellowships, he subsequently conducted further research in a variety of photo-science fields at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, University of Melbourne, and Imperial College London/Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Since joining CSIRO he has led a diversity of research teams working closely with industry on the development of novel polymer-based active packaging materials, biopolymer composites, optical features for product security, and optoelectronic devices. He has been heading CSIRO’s research on novel protocols and architectures for encapsulation of printed photovoltaic modules since 2011, and is responsible for the characterisation of the photo-physical and optoelectronic performance of organic and perovskite materials for next-generation optoelectronics applications.
Dr Hasitha Weerasinghe
- Dr Hasitha Weerasinghe is a research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Melbourne, Australia. After receiving his Bachelor’s (2002) and Master’s (2006) degrees in Physics, Dr. Weerasinghe completed his PhD degree at the Department of Materials Engineering of Monash University in 2011. He then held a post-doctoral research position at the University of Melbourne for two years. His research interests focus on fabrication and characterisation of perovskite/organic-based photovoltaic devices/modules, development of barrier encapsulation, new materials on improving stability and conducting lifetime studies of photovoltaic devices. He is a recipient of an ARENA Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Dr Dechan Angmo
- Dr Dechan Angmo is a research scientist at CSIRO with expertise is in a wide range of upscaling printing and coating methods for solution-processed solar cells. Her research interest encompasses materials, device architecture, processing, and stability evaluation aiming at scalable, low-cost and high throughput manufacturing of solar cells via vacuum-free printing and coating methods. At CSIRO, she is working on developing robust processes for the upscaling of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). She completed her Ph.D. in the year 2014 and subsequently carried out a short stint as a post-doc at the Technical University of Denmark in organic photovoltaics (OPV). She co-founded a start-up company in OPV in 2014 (infinityPV ApS) which she has since left to pursue her love for research. Dr Angmo has contributed to over 40 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 4 book chapters.
Dr Narendra Pai
- Narendra Pai concluded his PhD from the School of Chemistry at Monash University under Dr Alexandr Simonov and the Late Prof. Leone Spiccia, focusing on developing novel lead-free perovskite materials for optoelectronic applications. During this time, he also worked with spectroscopic and crystallographic experts of CSIRO as a visiting scientist to advance lead-free perovskite research.
Prior to the PhD degree, Narendra spent time developing photoanodes for dye-sensitised solar cells as part of his Master's research and in self-balancing robots for assistive applications as part of his Bachelor's degree in India. Consequently, he worked as an Application and Service Engineer at Hysitron (acquired by Bruker now) for a short term until he followed his passion for research on solar cells. Adjunctive to the PhD research, Narendra was awarded a post-graduate publication scholarship and ACAP fellowship to conduct impactful research on next-generation photovoltaics materials.
Currently, Narendra is enthusiastic about developing radiation-tolerant perovskite solar cells for space applications as part of his Research-Plus Fellowship with the Printable PV team.
Ms Regine Chantler
- Regine is Laboratory Manager of the Flexible Electronics Laboratory at CSIRO Clayton. While managing the logistics of this complex experimental facility, she is also the first point of contact and frequent tour guide to a wide array of visitors including those from industry, government and the research community. Regine is a key contributor to the activities of the Printed Photovoltaics team. She is the project leader for CSIRO’s contributions to the ARENA-funded Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, and project leader for the CRC-P project ‘Printed solar films for value-added building products for Australia’ with industry partners Norwood and Solafast. Regine is an electrical engineer and contributes to innovations in printed solar electrode design.
Mr Karl Weber
- Karl Weber is a senior engineer in the Transitional Technologies & Prototyping team. He plays a lead coordinating role that involves engagement with external clients, and the design and construction of demonstrators that showcase CSIRO technologies. He has been working to integrate our printed PV film into value-added products. Karl is currently in secondment with the Metal Industries Program.
Dr Christopher Dunn
- Chris has been at CSIRO for over 10 years and in that time has worked with electroactive materials for applications in transistors (OFET), lighting (OLED) and photovoltaics (Perovskite Solar Cells – PSCs). He is currently working on an ARENA project on the development of semi-transparent perovskite solar cells that will be integrated as part of the manufacturing process to add extra value and functionality to commercial windows. Prior to his time at CSIRO, Chris spent 9 years as an industrial Research Scientist working on materials development and on the scale-up and characterisation of materials for electrical and optical applications in Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) following on from his Ph.D. and Post-Doctoral work. He has a long-standing interest in the self-organising properties of materials and the consequences this has for their structure, functions and properties.
Dr. Jueng-Eun Kim
- Jueng-Eun Kim received an MS and Ph.D. supervised by Prof. Dong-Yu Kim at School of Materials Science and Technology, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Korea. Her research focused on organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells, device processing with slot-die coating and upscaling solar cell devices, with several long stints at CSIRO. After getting her PhD, Dr Kim held a postdoc position at Monash University supervised by Prof. Jacek Jasieniak, working on the manufacturing of roll-to-roll printed perovskite solar cells, with Dr. Doojin Vak at CSIRO. Currently, she is a research scientist at CSIRO.
Luke Sutherland
- Luke is a final-year Ph.D. candidate affiliated with both the Materials Science and Engineering department at Monash University and CSIRO. He holds an undergraduate Bachelor's degree (Honours) in Mechanical Engineering from RMIT, where he completed a comprehensive internship for Siemens in Mulheim, Germany. Luke's area of expertise centers around Perovskite Solar Cells, with a particular focus on the scaled-up fabrication, encapsulation, and replacing the expensive gold electrode with carbon alternatives. In addition, he has also served as the Engineering Graduate Research Representative for Monash University and has garnered multiple presentation-based awards.
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