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Richard K. Ahrenkiel is a Research Professor of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He is also a Consultant and Research Fellow Emeritus at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, (formerly the Solar Energy Research Institute) Golden, Colorado, where he has worked from 1981 to 2005. He became a Research Fellow at NREL in 2000. His area of specialization is the measurement and characterization of photovoltaic cells and materials. He is one of the world experts in the area of carrier recombination and carrier lifetime. He also works in photovoltaic device design and modeling. He received a B.S. degree in Engineering Physics and the M.S. and Ph.D degrees in Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana. He joined the staff of the Research Laboratories of the Eastman Kodak Company. From 1972-76, he worked on the newly founded electronic photography project using silicon charge coupled devices as sensing elements. He joined Laser Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 (then LASL), and in 1978, he became a Group Leader in the Electronics Division of LANL. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the American Vacuum Society, and the Optical Society of America. | 