Global Solar Power Forum Speakers

Brian Korgel

Director, Energy Institute, The University of Texas at Austin

Brian A. Korgel is the Director of The University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute and the Rashid Engineering Regents Chair Professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering. He also directs the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for a Solar Powered Future (SPF2050), the Nanotechnologies area of the UT Austin Portugal Program at UT, and serves as Associate Editor of the journal, Chemistry of Materials. He is a former Fulbright Fellow and has been Visiting Professor at the University of Alicante in Spain, the Université Josef Fourier in France and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from UCLA in 1997 and was a post-doctoral fellow at University College Dublin, Ireland, in the Department of Chemistry. He has given more than 260 invited talks and published more than 280 papers. He is also an artist, exploring language and human/technology cohabitation.

He has co-founded two companies, Innovalight and Piñon Technologies, and received various honors including the 2012 Professional Progress Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and election to Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Vatan Kumar

Manager in the PV Projects team at RWE Clean Energy

Vatan Kumar is Manager in the PV Projects team at RWE Clean Energy, where he leads the design and development of utility-scale solar projects across the U.S. His work focuses on optimizing DC:AC ratios, inverter and module selection, and applying advanced modeling practices such as P50/P75 uncertainty analysis, TMY tuning, and inter-annual variability assessment.

Vatan holds an M.S. in Electrical Power Systems Engineering from North Carolina State University, where he now lectures in the Utility-Scale PV Systems course. He is passionate about bridging academia and industry, mentoring future engineers, and advancing best practices in large-scale PV system design. With a data-driven approach and cross-functional field experience, he is committed to scaling renewable energy with both technical rigor and practical innovation.

Doug Lewin

Author, Texas Energy and Power Newsletter Host, Energy Capital Podcast President, Stoic Energy

Doug Lewin authors the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter and hosts the Energy Capital Podcast. He is a nationally recognized energy expert, particularly in the electric grid, renewable energy, energy efficiency, demand response, utility regulation, and pollution reduction. Lewin founded Stoic Energy, a Texas consulting firm specializing in grid and energy issues, in 2018. Previously, Doug led government and regulatory affairs work for CLEAResult, an energy efficiency program implementer for over 250 utilities in 40 states and provinces. Prior to joining CLEAResult, Lewin was the founding Executive Director of the South-central Partnership for Energy Efficiency as a Resource (SPEER) and worked at the Texas Legislature for five years as a legislative aide, primarily on energy, environment, and climate issues.

Joseph Luther

National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden CO, USA

Joseph M. Luther is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, where he leads research for next-generation optoelectronics. He received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder (2005) and a Ph.D. in Physics from the Colorado School of Mines (2009).

Following his Ph.D., Luther joined the group of A. Paul Alivisatos at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher, further expanding his expertise in nanomaterials. He returned to NREL as a staff scientist in 2009, where he has since become an internationally recognized leader in solution-processed and emerging photovoltaic technologies.

Luther’s research history spans nearly the full spectrum of PV platforms, from III-Vs and silicon to nanocrystal-based cadmium telluride, dye-sensitized, organic, and especially metal halide perovskite solar cells. He has established three world-record efficiency benchmarks on the Best Research-Cell Efficiency Chart and has been named to the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list eight times.

Joshua Rhodes

Research Scientist and Lecturer at The University of Texas at Austin, Non-Resident Fellow at Columbia University, Founding Partner and CTO of IdeaSmiths LLC

Joshua D. Rhodes, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist and Lecturer at The University of Texas at Austin, a non-Resident Fellow at Columbia University, a Founding Partner and CTO of IdeaSmiths LLC, and a commissioner on the City of Austin Electricity Utility Commission. He has authored over 125 scientific articles, columns, op-eds, journal publications, and reports which have been cited over 2,500 times and he has given over 120 keynotes, panel presentations, podcast interviews, and other talks. His current area of work is in how energy systems power our modern lives, with a particular focus on new supplies and demands of electricity. He holds a double bachelors in Mathematics and Economics from Stephen F. Austin State University, a masters in Computational Mathematics from Texas A&M University, a masters in Architectural Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. He enjoys mountain biking, backpacking, and a good cup of coffee.

W.S. Sampath

Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado State University (CSU).

Dr. W.S. Sampath is Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado State University (CSU). He has been a faculty member at CSU since 1985 with research focus on CdTe photovoltaics since 1991. His research group has demonstrated an efficiency of 20.1% for polycrystalline thin film CdTe photovoltaics, one of the highest efficiencies among universities and has published more than 130 papers. He is a site director of the NSF I/UCRC (Industry/University Co-Operative Research Center) for SPF2050. The center has completed ten years (Phase I & II) and is currently in phase III that includes financial support from industrial members. His research has been supported by NSF, DOE, EPA, USAID, UN-ICS, and industry over the past 37 years.

Andy Uhler

Andy Uhler is an award-winning public radio correspondent and host of Phases & Stages: The Texas Energy Story. He’s currently a journalism fellow through a partnership between UT’s Energy Institute and Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. He started his journalism career as an undergraduate at KUT, the University of Texas at Austin NPR affiliate. He transitioned to music journalism in 2006, becoming the senior producer of Texas Music Matters. After completing a master’s degree in global policy studies at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in 2014, he returned to KUT to help launch the Texas Standard. The following year, he took a job as a sustainability reporter at American Public Media’s Marketplace, where he remained until accepting the energy journalism fellowship.