The Company
Scientific Advisory Board
SolarPrint (the “Company”) has recently established the Science Advisory Board (SAB) chaired
by Professor Don MacElroy. The Executive gave it a broad mandate to advise the Company on
technical matters. The SAB's principal responsibility includes:
Reviewing the quality and relevance of the scientific and technical information being used or being proposed as the basis for the Company’s research and development roadmap.
Reviewing research programs and the technical collaborations with existing and prospective research and commercial partners.
Advising the Company on broad scientific matters in science, technology, social and economic issues, and
- Advising the Company on the long term strategic roadmap for our research programme
SolarPrint Scientific Advisory Board Members is made up of
Professor J.M. Donal MacElroy - Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering (Chairperson)
Professor MacElroy is Chair of University College Dublin’s Chemical Engineering Department. His teaching interests are in Thermodynamics, Adsorption and Chromatography and Process Control. His research topics include non-equilibrium molecular phenomena in strongly inhomogeneous systems with particular emphasis on Membrane Separations Technology (notably CO2 capture), Transport in Polymer and Biopolymer Media, Adsorption (difficult gas separations and recovery) and studies of the influence of far infra-red and microwave fields on the properties of polar materials (water, proteins, and solid-phase organic synthesis of low molecular pharmaceuticals).
Within the scope of a recently funded SFI-SRC project, Professor MacElroy is also serving as lead-PI on research into the development of novel materials for conversion of solar energy into power, Hydrogen and low molecular weight fuels.
Professor MacElroy has served on numerous review panels for funding agencies in Ireland, the UK, the EU and the US and on Scientific Committees of international conferences in Europe and the Far-East.
Professor Ravindranathan Thampi
Professor Thampi holds the SFI-Airtricity Professorship in Solar Energy Engineering attached to the UCD School of Chemical & Bioprocess Engineering, University College Dublin.
Before joining UCD in July 2009, he was a group leader and Project Manager at the Laboratory of Photonics & Interfaces (LPI), EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, where he worked for over 23 years and intimately followed the invention and development of dye sensitized solar cells from its very beginning. He has extensive collaborations with several countries, notably EU countries, USA, India and Japan. He has published about 90 research papers on solar energy, photocatalysis, heterogeneous catalysis, solid state chemistry, fuel cells and biosensors in top international journals and books. He has about ten patents to his credit.
His past industrial experience include the scaling up of a laboratory invention in catalysis to a large commercial petrochemical plant. His other experience includes IP management and assisting industrial start-ups.