Arvind V. Shah studied in Bombay, London and Zurich, receiving his Ph.D. in applied physics in 1968 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). He worked at the ETH until founding the Centre for Electronics Design and Technology (CEDT) at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, in 1975. In March 1979, he was appointed professor of electronics at the University of Neuchâtel, and in 1988 began a concurrent, part-time appointment at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He is founder of Thin-film and Photovoltaics Laboratory at IMT Neuchâtel where he was involved with the invention of VHF plasma deposition and the pioneering work with microcrystalline silicon and “micromorph” tandem solar cells. Since 2000, he has been involved in the successful industrial transfer of technology, negotiating major licensing agreements both to start-up and established companies.