Magnolia Solar Taps New CTO

Magnolia Solar Inc., a manufacturer of nano-based solar cell technologies for terrestrial applications located in Woburn, Mass., announced that Dr. Roger E. Welser has joined the company as chief technology officer. Prior to joining Magnolia, Welser served as director of technology and new product development in III-V materials at Kopin Corp., a Taunton, Mass.-based company dealing in nanosemiconductor materials and devices. Welser’s research and development group at Kopin has focused on bandgap engineering the material structure with the hope of improving the performance and cost of GaAs-based transistor devices. Welser has also been actively involved in the field of photovoltaics. His graduate studies were supported by the NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program, with a focus on materials for high-efficiency, multijunction III-V solar cells. More recently, he won funding from NASA, DARPA and the NSF to pioneer the development of quantum solar cell structures. Welser received his PhD in applied physics from Yale University in 1995 and an undergraduate degree in physics with honors from Swarthmore College in 1989. He is an author of more than 70 publications, patents and presentations.