Brian Norton

Professor Brian Norton PhD DSc DUniv(h.c.) FIAE MRIA is Emeritus Professor of Solar Energy Applications at TU Dublin, President of the European Sustainable Energy Innovation Alliance and a Vice-President of the European Academies Science Advisory Council.

His research is on the applications of solar energy particularly in the context of buildings. It has led to innovations in photovoltaics, glazing, daylighting devices and solar water and air-heating. He is particularly associated with conceiving and developing the use of phase change materials to cool photovoltaics.

His honours include an Honorary Doctorate from Universite de Technologie de Troyes, France, Fellowship of the Irish Academy of Engineering, Honorary Membership of the Daylight Academy, and Honorary Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers.  He has been awarded the CIBSE Napier Shaw Medal; Energy Institute’s Roscoe Award, American Association of Publishers PROSE Award for the book “Comprehensive Renewable Energy”, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Solaris Conference series and “Solar Energy” Journal Best Paper Award in Photovoltaics. He is Visiting Professor at several universities internationally, supervised over sixty doctorates and his research outputs have received over 16,000 citations with an h-index of 65.

Professor Norton was Head of Energy Research at Tyndall National Institute, a Research Professor at University College Cork and Professor of Solar Energy Applications at TU Dublin. He was also a Principal Investigator in MaREI, the Irish national research centre for Energy, Climate and Marine. He was formally President of (what is now) Technological University Dublin for sixteen years and prior to that Dean of Engineering at Ulster University.