Rate My Professor Bram Hoex

Professor Bram Hoex is a Professor in the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at the University of New South Wales. He completed his MSc degree in Applied Physics in 2003 and his PhD degree in Applied Physics in 2008, both at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. His PhD research on functional thin films for high-efficiency silicon solar cells received the SolarWorld Junior Einstein Award and the Leverhulme Trust Technology Transfer Award. From 2008 to 2015, he worked at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore at the National University of Singapore, where he led the Photovoltaic Characterisation Laboratory, served as Director of the Silicon Materials and Solar Cells Cluster, and headed the Monocrystalline Silicon Wafer Solar Cells Group. In 2015, he joined UNSW Sydney, where he holds the position of Professor and Deputy Head of School (Research). He also holds a Graduate Certification in University Learning and Teaching from UNSW Sydney (2016) and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (2020).

His research focuses on the development and application of nanoscale thin films for renewable energy devices, solar cell and module reliability, performance and financial modelling of large-scale solar farms, and the use of artificial intelligence in materials science and renewable energy systems. He is internationally recognised for his pioneering work on aluminium oxide surface passivation for crystalline silicon solar cells, which has become a standard in industrial PERC and TOPCon technologies, and for pioneering the application of atomic layer deposition in silicon wafer solar cell manufacturing. He has secured more than A$80 million in competitive research funding, published more than 300 scientific papers with over 12,000 citations and an h-index of 51, and co-founded the companies Foresight PV and P2AgentX. His contributions have been recognised with awards including the 2016 IEEE PVSC Young Professional Award and inclusion in Renewable Energy World’s 2018 global Solar 40 under 40 list.