John W. Baumstark – Chairman & CEO

John has over 20 years of technology experience in early and late-stage private and public companies.  Most recently, John was an Operating Partner at H.I.G. Ventures where he played an active role in the overall strategy of the fund as well as the development of portfolio companies.

Prior to joining H.I.G. Ventures, he was responsible for overseeing global operations of IBM’s Master Data Management (MDM) Server unit, part of IBM’s Information Management division within the IBM Software Group.
 
Prior to IBM, John was president and CEO of DWL, the leader in Customer Data Integration software.  Under John’s leadership the company was cash flow positive for 20 consecutive quarters, was profitable and was named one of the fastest growing technology companies in North America three years in a row by Deloitte and Touche.  DWL was acquired by IBM in 2005.

Prior to DWL, John served as the Chief Operating Officer of TRADEX Technologies. Under John's leadership, TRADEX became the market leader in digital marketplace platforms.  In March of 2000, TRADEX was acquired by Ariba (arba) for $5.6 billion, making it one of the largest software acquisitions in history.

Before TRADEX, John directed worldwide field operations for Infinium Software.  There he built over $100 million in revenue, led a successful initial public offering and acquired two companies. Before joining Infinium, Baumstark held sales and sales management positions with Management Science America (MSA), a mainframe application software provider.

John graduated from Colorado College with a BA in Business / Economics.  He is a former director of Procuri, which was sold to Ariba and of  Marketmax, which was sold to SAS

Ajeet Rohatgi, Ph.D. - Founder, CTO

Dr. Rohatgi received the B. S. (E. E.) degree from Indian Institute of Technology in 1971, the M. S. (Materials Engineering) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1973, and the Ph.D. in Metallurgy and Materials Science from Lehigh University in 1977.
He joined the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1977 and became a Westinghouse Fellow while working on the science and technology of photovoltaic and microelectronic devices.

Dr. Rohatgi joined the ECE faculty at Georgia Tech in 1985 and started a program on photovoltaics, which has become one of the best in the country. He has become an internationally recognized leader in photovoltaics. He is the founding director of the first university-based DOE Center of Excellence in Photovoltaic Research and Education. He is the author of more than 300 publications and holds 10 U.S. patents. Dr. Rohatgi has received numerous awards and distinctions from professional societies and Georgia Tech.

Stephen P. Shea, Ph.D. - Vice President of Manufacturing

Dr. Shea has spent over 30 years in Photovoltaics working on device design, manufacturing process development, technology transfer and engineering management.  He has worked primarily as a consultant since 2004.  Steve’s work has involved all aspects of the PV manufacturing value-stream, with consulting projects including process optimization, cost modeling of next-generation manufacturing processes, advanced metallization research and a full factory installation.

 In 2005-2006 Steve was Senior Visiting Photovoltaic Manufacturing Specialist at Xerox-PARC in Palo Alto.  Prior to that, he spent over twenty years with Solarex, (later BP Solar), one of the largest vertically-integrated PV companies in the world with factories in Maryland, Madrid, Bangalore and Sydney.  As Director of Technology in the Crystalline Division of BP Solar, he was responsible for technology development and implementation across the entire PV value stream from raw material to modules. Before joining Solarex in 1983 and after completing his Ph.D., Steve ran the Materials Analysis Lab at the University of Delaware’s Institute of Energy Conversion, working with a wide range of emerging thin-film materials and devices.
 
Steve earned an M S.E.E. and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware, where his graduate work focused on carrier transport in thin film devices, and both a B. S. and a B. A. from Swarthmore College.  He is the author of over twenty five papers on photovoltaics.

Daniel L. Meier, Ph.D. - Vice President of Research and Development

Dan joins Suniva from the technical staff of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where he worked on advanced cell designs involving amorphous silicon/crystalline silicon heterojunctions and on issues related to the production of silicon feedstock by novel processes.

Prior to NREL, Dan served as V.P. of Engineering from 2003 to 2006 with Solar Power Industries.  His staff produced 265 kg multicrystalline ingots by the directional solidification technique, 156 mm square wafers from the ingots, and developed processes for fabricating multicrystalline cells from these wafers.  Cell production was 3.5 MW in 2005.  Before SPI, Dan became Chief Scientist for EBARA Solar, a start‑up company in 1994.   There he was responsible for the development of dendritic web silicon ribbon crystal growth and cell fabrication in a pilot‑scale facility.  His team stabilized the growth of dendritic web crystals by introducing a magnetic field to allow the production of long crystals (typically 10 m) and developed a unique cell structure based on an aluminum alloy back p-n junction.  Modules were made for successful demonstration projects up to 19 kW in size.

Dan began his career in photovoltaics at the Westinghouse R&D Center in 1980 where he worked on the design, fabrication, and characterization of silicon solar cells from thin (100 micron) dendritic web ribbon crystals.  He also participated in the fabrication and testing of superconductive components for low‑loss microwave applications and superconductive digital integrated circuits.  He left Westinghouse in 1994 with the ranking of  Fellow Scientist.

Dan holds a B.S. from St. Vincent College and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Carnegie‑Mellon University, all in physics.  He has published over 75 technical papers in conference proceedings and archival journals and holds 11 US patents.   He was the recipient of three Westinghouse Signature Awards for excellence in engineering.

James M. Modak - CFO

Jim Modak is an experienced financial executive with nearly 30 years experience in high growth businesses.  His career has included three public offerings, four sell-side M&A transactions and over 50 buy-side M&A transactions.   Before joining Suniva, Jim was the CFO of Datapath, a $300 million company providing mobile satellite communications.  While at Datapath he led the company’s private placement of $350 million in 2006. His career has included COO and CFO roles at companies such as DWL, a private enterprise software company which was grown from $5 million in revenues to over $35 million in four years, ultimately leading to the sale of the company to IBM.  Additionally, Jim was the CFO at Tradex Technologies where he helped build the business into one of the leaders in developing digital marketplaces.  Jim and the executive team ultimately sold the company to Ariba in one of the largest software M&A transactions at the time of $5.6 billion.

He has held senior financial executive positions at such companies as Total System Services-NYSE, American Software and Logility-NASDAQ and FFMC-NYSE (sold to First Data in 1995). In addition to public financing experience, Jim has significant operational and business development experience. Jim began his career with KPMG Peat Marwick where he spent 12 years after graduating from Notre Dame University.

J. Bryan Ashley - Vice President of Marketing & Sales

Bryan brings almost 30 years of hi-tech marketing, business development and sales experience working and leading in companies ranging in size and diversity from IBM (most recently) to his own successful consulting start-up in the early 1990s.

Prior to Suniva, Bryan was Director of Industry Marketing worldwide for the $3+ billion Information Management division of IBM Corp's Software Group. He led teams that managed both industry and sector marketing strategy/messaging and also the transition to cross industry "CIO" and an industry specific "Line of Business" focused marketing messaging frameworks. Before his recent IBM position, Bryan was the CMO/V.P. of Marketing and Business Development for DWL Software for almost 4 years which was based in Atlanta and Toronto. DWL was the recognized thought leader and pioneer in creating the customer data integration (CDI) software space and was acquired by IBM in September of 2005.

He has also held positions as V.P. of Marketing, V.P. of Business Development, V.P./Director of Strategic Alliances, Managing Director of Sales-E/ME/A, V.P. of Product Marketing, at various companies including Infinium Software (Software 2000), Talus/Manugistics, Ariba, Witness Systems, DSI Inc (co-founder) and started his career in sales at IBM in the late 1970s. Bryan gained product marketing and development experience in IBM's Rochester lab in the mid-to- late 1980s as a market manager bringing the highly successful AS/400 product line to market.

Bryan holds degrees in Marketing and Economics from Louisiana Tech University and has done graduate studies at the Darden School and at the Wharton school. He brings a wealth of experience in international negotiations and in building successful, motivated teams to create and implement marketing and business development strategies/tactics in international markets.