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Eicke Richard Weber (born 28 October 1949 in Münnerstadt) is a German physicist.
Weber grew up from 1955 in Cologne, where he also took his Abitur. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Cologne from 1967. After graduating in 1972, he took on an assistant position at the RWTH Aachen and finished his doctorate in physics in 1976 with the topic Point Defects in Deformed Silicon and received his Ph.D. His habilitation followed in 1983 with the topic Transition Metals in Silicon. Weber joined the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, first as Assistant in 1983, than Associate and since 2001 as Full Professor, and stayed there for 23 years, until he accepted in 2006 a call from the Fraunhofer society. He spent one research semester each as a visiting professor at Tōhoku-Gakuin University in Sendai, and Kyoto University in Japan. In Berkeley, he served 2004–06 as founding Chair of the Interdisciplinary Nanoscale Science and Engineering Graduate Group. From July 2006 to December 2016, he was director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in Freiburg, Germany. In addition to his position as Director of ISE, he held the Chair of Physics/Solar Energy at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg. From 2012 to 2016, he served also as executive director of the Centre for Renewable Energies at the University of Freiburg. He then worked as the Director of the Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS) from January 2017 to May 2018.[1]
In 2002, Weber and colleagues founded the German Scholars Organization (GSO), of which he remains president today. In 2013, he and colleagues founded the German Energy Storage Association, until 2016 he was BVES President, since then Honorary President.[2] In 2016, he was appointed to the Economic Senate of the German Association of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (BVMW), since March 2020 he is heading the BVMW Commission for Energy and Sustainable Economy.[3]
In the course of his scientific work, he has authored or co-authored 618 papers.[citation needed]
In 2016, he ran unsuccessfully for the Free Democratic Party in the state elections in Baden-Württemberg in the electoral district Freiburg II. He is co-president of the European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC),[4] an interest group of companies and research institutions for the production of photovoltaic systems in the European Union. As such, he considers the complete supply of Germany by green electricity by 2030 to be plausible, provided that appropriate measures are taken.[citation needed]
