Heather Mirletz Email & Phone Number

Denver, CO

• Circular Economy Priorities for Photovoltaics (PV) in the Energy Transition
• Capturing and harmonizing evolving mass and energy flows of PV modules in open-source Python model, PV ICE, enabling tradeoff analyses of design and life cycle management options, ex: lifetime extension vs design for.
• Quantifying mass, energy, and carbon impacts of circular pathways for PV in the context of energy transition goals
• Classwork covered fundamentals of energy systems, transportation, life cycle assessment (LCA), and energy policy

San Francisco Bay Area

Tucson, Arizona Area

• Championed investigations of macro and micro-scale defects in CIGS flexible modules, made recommendations to project managers, process engineers, and technicians, enabling pilot line yield increase from 70% to 93%
• Performed practical, efficient failure analysis, developing methodologies utilizing more than 8 characterization tools, and collaborated with process engineers to obtain accurate, statistically robust answers and.
• Reported failure analysis results directly to CEO, managers, engineers, and technicians alike, ensuring clarity and comprehension by understanding department priorities and technical depth

Cleveland, OH

- Contributed to validation of product viability by characterizing uniformity and defects of multilayer polymer films for optical data storage, utilizing fluorescence confocal microscopy, AFM, microtome, and ImageJ analysis- Performed DOE and analysis for product lifetime and ASTM-adhesion-standard compliant lamination process- Lead author on NSF SBIR.

Solar Durability And Lifetime Extension Center

• Masters Thesis with Professor Roger H. FrenchDegradation of Transparent Conductive Oxides (TCOs); Mechanistic Observations and the Role of Interfacial Layers
• Lifetime, degradation and reliability testing to quantify mechanistic degradation of TCOs, relating outdoor and accelerated exposures on 258 TCO samples with statistically robust analysis techniques
• TCO interface modifications using organosilanes and conductive polymer, altering degradation mechanisms
• Photovoltaic and display applications, implications for reliability science and testingWork at the SDLE Center
• Mentored and collaborated with Kelly Peterson for 2 years, enabling her to publish as 2nd year undergraduate
• Developed protocols for Kruss contact angle and surface free energy analysis, QUV exposure chamber, and lab-specific user guides for LaTeX, R, and Git; utilized new statistics-based predictive modeling techniques

• Created protocols for Angstrom and Plasma Systems ARC plasma sputter deposition systems for ITO and AZO
• Self-directed summer research: Deposition Parameters of TCO films for OPV; Oxygen and Temperature Effects
• Generated 4 undergraduate research projects across 4 academic departments, and led directly to masters research
• Exercised precision, efficiency and delicacy in handling ITO and AZO samples with sensitive chemistry

Columbia, Maryland

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd

Activities and Societies: DI&A AmbassadorCircular Economy Priorities for Photovoltaics (PV) in the Energy Transition • Capturing and.

Mse, Materials Science And Engineering, Solar Reliability

Activities and Societies: MRS student member, SPIE student member, AVS student memberResearch explores reliability testing and interface.

Bs, Chemical Engineering

Activities and Societies: CWRU Swing Club

Ph.D., Advanced Energy Systems

Trying to save the world from catastrophic climate change