Lab 360 Solar Pty Ltd (Lab360) was founded in March 2024. Prof Thorsten Trupke, Dr Oliver Kunz, and Jürgen Weber are building a highly qualified and motivated technical and management team to develop Daytime PL imaging into commercial products and services. Our existing team has deep technical and scientific know-how and decades of experience with the development and commercialisation of advanced luminescence imaging solutions.
Prof Thorsten Trupke
CEO, Co-founder
Thorsten is a Professor at the School for Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where he leads a research team of staff, students and postdoctoral fellows.
Thorsten has contributed across a wide range of topics associated with Photovoltaic science and technology, including the invention and first demonstration of photoluminescence imaging at UNSW, technology that was successfully commercialized through BT imaging, which Thorsten co-founded and for which he acted as Chief Technology Officer over 15 years, until 2022. Thorsten and his team are now focused on adapting PL imaging for field testing of crystalline silicon PV modules in full daylight. Thorsten is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering (ATSE), his work has been recognized by numerous international awards, including the ATSE Clunies Ross Innovation Award in 2019 and the prestigious IEEE William R Cherry Award in 2021.
Dr Oliver Kunz
CTO, Co-founder
Oliver Kunz has two decades of PV industry and research experience. In 2009 he completed a PhD in photovoltaics at the world-renowned School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at the University of New South Wales and is now a research fellow at UNSW. In 2019 his team “Solar Vision” won the CSIRO ON-PRIME commercialization award.
For the last five years Oliver’s work focused on the development of novel outdoor photoluminescence imaging methods for silicon photovoltaic modules. Oliver has significant prior commercial experience, including as a founder of Solar Vision Technologies. In early 2024 he co-founded Lab360.
Jürgen Weber
VP technology, Co-founder
Jürgen Weber started his career in PV as a mechatronics engineer, specializing in solar cell measurement and testing at the Fraunhofer ISE CalLab in 2000. From 2003 he worked at the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at UNSW, initially in the Thin-Film Group and after completing his M.E. in 2006 as manager of the characterisation laboratory. He joined the UNSW spin-off company BT Imaging in 2009, with focus on product development of PL Imaging instruments for wafers, solar cells and modules. In 2023, he joined the PL research team at UNSW full-time, with strong focus on the development of drone-based PL-inspection of solar farms.