Daily News Briefs

Global Photonic Energy Corp., a Ewing, N.J.-based developer of sustainable organic photovoltaic technologies, announced that its research partners at Princeton University have been awarded a three-year subcontract to extend the work of electrical engineering professor Stephen R. Forrest, whose team previously advanced organic solar cell efficiency from ~1 percent to 3.6 percent as part of a multiyear effort in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Photovoltaic (PV) Technologies Beyond the Horizon program for photovoltaic-related research. Forrest's DOE subcontract runs through 2007. GPEC was founded in 1994 by entrepreneur Sherwin I. Seligsohn, who is also the founder, chairman and CEO of Universal Display Corp. and American Biomimetics Corp. . . . Charles Gay and Thomas Grandke have joined Konarka Technologies Inc., of Lowell, Mass., as members of its scientific advisory council. Gay is chairman of the advisory board at SunPower, a maker of silicon solar cells, and is a co-founder and director at Greenstar, a company that develops multi-function solar-powered community centers in small villages in the developing world. He was previously director of the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, president and CEO of Siemens Solar Industries and ASE Americas and president of ARCO Solar. Grandke joins Konarka's scientific advisory council as a result of the company's acquisition of Siemens' organic photovoltaic research activities in 2004. He is head of Siemens Corporate Technology's Materials and Microsystems division, where he is involved with nanotechnology and electrically conductive polymers, among other technologies. Previously, he was president and CEO of Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, N.J., and held key positions in its Medical Engineering Group's Magnetic Resonance division. Konarka makes polymer photovoltaic products that provide a source of renewable power for commercial, industrial, government and consumer applications.