Biography
Dr. Shigeru Niki received his Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering (Applied Physics) from University of California, San Diego in March 1991. He joined Electrotechnical Laboratory (reorganized to AIST in 2001: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) in April 1991. He has been involved in the R&D of photovoltaic technologies, especially on CuInGaSe2 solar cells, for more than 25 years. He was assigned to be the director of photovoltaic technologies at AIST in April 2013. He became the director of renewable energy research center at AIST in April 2015. Since then, he was involved in various renewable energy technologies such as wind power, geothermal, hydrogen carriers, etc., in addition to the photovoltaic technologies. He currently works as the assistant director-general of the department of energy and environment at AIST in which about 350 researchers are engaged in the R&D of wide variety of energy and environment technologies.
Research topics in charge:
photovoltaics (CIGS, CZTS, c-Si etc.), wind power, geothermal, shallow geothermal and hydrogeology, hydrogen energy carrier, energy network, etc.,