John Rockdale

John Rockdale has a long and varied career in the manufacturing industry. John began their career in 1990 as the Director of Operations at Komag, where they managed 500 manufacturing associates and was responsible for generating annual revenue of $150M. In 2000, they moved on to UltraCard as the Sr. Director of Recording Media Development, where they led the development and commercialization efforts for a novel high capacity recording medium for Smart Cards. John then went on to DayStar Technologies in 2006 as the Director of Manufacturing Process Engineering, where they led process engineering activities for new process and equipment introductions to manufacturing. In 2009, they joined Atlumin Energy, Inc. as the Process Engineering Manager, where they led the development and commercialization efforts to produce Atlumin's first rotatable molybdenum sputter target products for CIGS and CdTe photovoltaic manufacturers. In 2012, they moved on to Solopower as the Director of Process Engineering, where they led CIGS PV cell efficiency improvement efforts, integrating work between NREL and the Development technical team. In 2014, they joined Asteelflash as the Plant Manager of the Fremont site, where they had full P&L responsibility and was responsible for Production, Purchasing, Warehouse, Engineering, Program Management and Quality. Most recently, in 2021, they joined Ambient Photonics as the Process Engineering Director.

John Rockdale attended the University of California, Davis, where they earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering.