Eugenia Corrales Named CEO of Nanosolar

Thin film solar cost leader Nanosolar, Inc. announced that Eugenia Corrales has been named CEO. Current CEO Geoff Tate will retire after two years at the company.

Tate recruited Corrales in May 2010 to serve as the executive vice president of engineering and operations. In this role, she has led the company’s transition to a commercial production phase while achieving both efficiency and production capacity benchmarks for Nanosolar.

For the past 18 months Corrales has managed all operations, as well as engineering, purchasing and planning for both the San Jose, CA and Luckenwalde, Germany sites. Under Corrales, cumulative shipments have gone from zero to 10MW; and median panel efficiencies are now 11.5%.

Corrales held a number of executive positions including several years as a vice president at Cisco, where she ran all of product operations for Cisco-branded products. She was previously responsible for manufacturing operations of $7B in router, switching and optical product revenue.

Prior to Cisco, Corrales spent 11 years in engineering and R&D management at HP. . Prior to joining Nanosolar, she was founder and VP engineering of two cleantech startups. She holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Grinnell College and a master’s in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.

Tate, who joined Nanosolar in early 2010, was recruited as an interim CEO with the charter to build an executive team capable of scaling into high volume manufacturing at high efficiencies and low cost. Today’s transition is the culmination of that effort. Tate had retired from Rambus in 2006 and is returning to retirement.

“I would like to congratulate Geoff on the tremendous progress made during his tenure at Nanosolar,” said Erik Straser, Nanosolar board member and general partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures. “Eugenia’s track record at Nanosolar and prior speaks for itself, and this planned transition will allow the company to maintain its momentum and trajectory. We are confident that under her stewardship we can grow the market for Nanosolar Utility panels and expand our global footprint.”

“I am proud of the work we’ve done positioning the company for its next stage of growth,” said Tate. “With Eugenia at the helm, the team and the technology are poised to make giant strides.”

“I am thrilled to lead such a talented team as we leverage this innovative printing technology to fulfill our mission to become the world’s lowest cost cell and panel manufacturer, independent of subsidies,” said Corrales. “We will continue to deliver on our stated production goals and efficiency roadmap for 2012.”