Second prestigious honor for Singh this year.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Clemson University professor Rajendra Singh has been named as the one of White House’s “Solar Champions of Change.”
Singh was named alongside nine industry leaders as being the most influential people when it comes to “driving policy changes at the local level to expand energy choices for Americans, grow jobs, and add new clean energy to the grid,” according to the White House. The naming of these 10 individuals is part of a larger initiative, undertaken by the Obama Administration, to advance and advocate solar energy development.
“Across the country, individuals are taking the initiative to spur solar deployment – whether they are community leaders helping to reduce permitting times, business owners looking for a cleaner energy source, or home-builders looking to offer new, renewable options for their customers,” the White House said.
Singh is currently the D. Houser Banks Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University. He is also the only professor to have been named to the Solar Champions of Change list by the White House; all the other honorees are higher-ups in some of the leading energy companies in the US.
Singh earned his B.S. degree in Physics from Agra University, and then completed his M.S. degree in Physics and Electronics at Meerut University. He then went to Canada, graduating in 1979 with a Ph.D. in Physics from the McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
After working as an assistant professor at Canada’s University of Waterloo, Singh came to the US, working briefly for Colorado State University before joining Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. in 1980, as one of its senior research scientists. This began his extensive involvement with thermal processing technology, and other cutting-edge innovations now being widely used in solar energy.
“Dr. Singh’s research contributions have been primarily in the field of rapid thermal processing, ultra-thin gate dielectrics, low and high-k dielectrics, superconductivity, manufacturing of silicon integrated circuits, and solar cells, thermoelectric devices, nanotechnology and local DC electricity,” says his Clemson University staff page. “His work on solar cells is a part of many recent textbooks on solar cells and has been cited by researchers throughout the world.”
This is the second prestigious honor bestowed upon Singh in as many months. In March, Singh was announced as one of three Indian-origin scientists recognized by the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). Singh was awarded the SPIE Technology Achievement Award for “his efforts in the elucidation and exploitation of photonic effects in rapid thermal processing for semiconductor manufacturing, and his technical leadership of photovoltaic technology.”