Technical Advisory Board
Frano Barbir
Consultant,
UNIDO-International Center for Hydrogen Energy Technologies, Istanbul, Turkey
Prior to his work with UNIDO’s Hydrogen Center (a UN Industrial Development Organization program to aid in practical demonstrations of hydrogen energy) Dr. Barbir was Professor-in-Residence at the Connecticut Global Fuel Cell Center, a joint effort of the state government and industry to promote fuel cell development and commercialization. Prior to joining the Connecticut Global Fuel Cell Center in 2003, Dr. Barbir served as Director of Fuel Cell Technology and Chief Scientist at Proton Energy Systems and VP of Technology and Chief Scientist at Energy Partners. He is co-inventor on seven fuel cell related patents and several patent applications, and has authored more than 150 publications mostly on fuel cells and hydrogen energy. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association for Hydrogen Energy.
Mark Farber
Photon Consulting, Boston, MA
Co-founder Evergreen Solar, Inc.
Photon Consulting provides business research and strategic advice to the global solar power sector. Evergreen Solar is one of the leading independent crystalline silicon solar photovoltaic cell and module manufacturers, known for its unique lower-cost photovoltaic cell process called String-Ribbon. As a founder of Evergreen Solar and its President for almost a decade, Mr. Farber has played a key role in the success of Evergreen and in the creation of the current solar photovoltaic industry. Mr. Farber was also Chairman of the Solar Alliance and a director of the Solar Energy Industries Association, trade associations active in solar policy development in the U.S. Prior to founding Evergreen Solar in 1994, Mr. Farber worked at Mobil Solar Energy Corporation, the solar division of Mobil Corporation, where he was responsible for marketing, sales and corporate partnering activities.
Pradeep Haldar
Director of the Energy and Environmental Technology Applications Center (E2TAC),
Professor and Head of NanoEngineering at the College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering, University at Albany, State University of New York.
E2TAC, the center Dr. Haldar directs, is part of the $3.2 billion Albany NanoTech Complex, an integrated research, development, prototyping, pilot manufacturing and educational resource, with a strategic portfolio of state-of-the-art laboratories and research facilities for applied nanotechnology. At the University at Albany, Dr. Haldar is leading the efforts, with several start-up and large established companies, to apply and integrate nanotechnology related to energy and environmental technologies including polymer and thin film photovoltaic devices, fuel cells, thermoelectric devices, ultracapacitors and power electronics. Prior to joining the University at Albany, Dr. Haldar served as Founder, Technical Director and General Manager of IGC-Superpower, a subsidiary of Intermagnetics General Corporation and held various other positions at Intermagnetics General. He serves as executive director of New Energy New York and Chair of the Clean Energy Alliance.
Allen Hershkowitz
Senior Scientist
Natural Resources Defense Council, New York, NY
Dr. Hershkowitz is the director of NRDC’s National Solid Waste Project and NRDC’s Paper Industry Reform Project. Dr. Hershkowitz was the Principal Contractor for the United States Congressional Office of Technology Assessment’s Report to Congress on Municipal Solid Waste Management. He served on the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council Committee on the Health Effects of Waste Incineration, and has advised many other groups and government agencies on waste management, waste-to-energy and recycling. Dr. Hershkowitz was the originator and project coordinator of the Bronx Community Paper Company project, a 400,000 tons-per-year paper recycling, brownfield cleanup and sustainable community development project in New York City; his experience with that project is outlined in his book, Bronx Ecology: Blueprint for a New Environmentalism.
Dan Rastler
Technical Director, Distributed Energy Resources
Electric Power Research Institute, San Jose, California
Mr. Rastler has been with EPRI, an independent non-profit center for electricity and environmental research whose clients represent over 90% of the electricity generated in the U.S., since 1982. He has been the Area Manager for the Renewables, Distributed Energy Resources, Energy Storage, Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Programs, and has served as the chief technology officer within EPRI’s distributed resources area. In those capacities, he has provided technical, business and market guidance to utilities, Fortune 500 companies, and to start-up companies seeking to develop alternative energy products, and has established and led utility consortia to demonstrate alternative energy options for residential and commercial and utility markets. As an early visionary of a “distributed power electric grid”, he conceived, developed and grew EPRI’s distributed energy program to provide a portfolio of products and services to the U.S. electric power industry.
