Suntech has an R&D team with excellent R&D capabilities, engaged in basic research and application research on solar photovoltaic technology, as well as research on improving existing production processes and industrializing new technologies. The company's founder, chairman and CEO Dr. Shi Zhengrong, the company's chief technology officer Dr. Stuart R. Wenham and the company's senior scientist Dr. Ji Jingjia are all outstanding experts in the field of photovoltaic technology, with more than ten years of research and development experience in photovoltaic technology. The company's R&D center currently has 53 people, 26 of whom are photovoltaic experts from home and abroad, including 4 professor-level experts, 5 with Ph.D.s, and 8 with master's degrees. The company has accumulated rich knowledge, skills and experience in silicon materials, solar cell device physics, detection and theoretical simulation, process technology and advanced photovoltaic manufacturing equipment development, and has a large number of patents and proprietary technologies. The company has made major breakthroughs in low-cost solar-grade silicon material technology, high-efficiency and low-cost crystalline silicon solar cell manufacturing technology, and the industrialization technology of next-generation polycrystalline silicon thin film solar cells. The company has also established long-term R&D cooperation with the Photovoltaic Research Center of the University of New South Wales in Australia and Sun Yat-sen University.