Education 

Dr. Gurleen received her Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication engineering from Guru Nanak Dev University, India. She was awarded IIT Bombay- Research Fellowship Award by Ministry of Human Resource and Development to work on her final year project titled ‘Polycrystalline silicon for solar cells’ at Centre for Nanoelectronics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), India. In 2014, she received Young India Fellowship-a program in collaboration with Ashoka University, Sciences Po, University of Pennsylvania, University of California, Berkeley, King’s College, London, Yale University, among others and spent a year learning nuances of liberal arts and leadership.

She recently received her Ph.D. degree from National University of Singapore’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering under the guidance of Prof. Aaron Danner and Dr. Rolf Stangl (Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore-SERIS). Her doctoral research focused on developing low-cost and high-efficiency architectures for solar cells using contact passivation. She has won numerous awards and accolades for her thesis work including Best Poster Award -2019 at 46th IEEE PVSC- Chicago, Best Paper Award at Silicon PV 2020, EUPVSEC’20 Best Student Award Finalist, etc.. She was also awarded Advancing Energy Scholarship-2019 by British Petroleum (BP) for her work and was featured as one of the twelve young leaders tackling the need for cleaner energy in 2019 by BP-Magazine.  

Start-Up Founder

Alongside her Ph.D., she also grew her startup ‘Solisfix’ which focused on developing scalable maintenance solutions for solar equipment in a developing countries to boost circular economy. This stint allowed her to develop strong interfaces with various stakeholders to understand the policy and technology gaps in the process chain.

Teacher

She is an experienced Graduate Tutor and taught module ‘Enterprise and Innovation’ designed for electrical engineering students to conceptualize and design a technology related new products and lead it to commercialization. She also worked with the Office of Student Affairs, NUS as a Resident Assistant to engage in community building and execute creative programs, fostering student development politically, socially, and culturally during her time at NUS.

Researcher

After her PhD, she worked as a Post-doctoral researcher at Institute of Photovoltaics Ile de France (IPVF) on developing Perovskites/Si tandem solar cells in collaboration with Total Energies, EDF (Électricité de France). Her major work involved making tunnel junctions (recombination junctions) using different silicon layers (nc:Si:H, polySi, a:Si:H, µc-SiOx) in industrial PECVD. She was also a visiting researcher at Thin-Film and Interfaces Physics Laboratory (LPICM), Ecole Polytechnique France.

Industry 

She worked as a PV Reliability Specialist - Emerging PV Technologies (Floating PV and Agri PV) at One Tech division of TotalEnergies.

Technocrat 

In her current role as Technology and Solar Specialist at International Solar Alliance, she provides expert technical and strategic guidance on a wide range of projects, including Integrated PV, AgriPV, Floating PV, BIPV, Reliability and Standards, and PV Waste Management. Her work not only enhances technological advancements but also ensures the long-term sustainability of solar energy solutions.