Eugene Iwaniczko, who came up with new ways to convert solar energy into electricity, died May 10 at a care center after battling cancer for six years. He was 58.
A service will be at 1 p.m. June 17 at Darrell Howe Mortuary in Lafayette.
Iwaniczko, a master research technician at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, went well beyond his educational level in coming up with “breakthroughs,” said Richard Crandall of Boulder, who hired Iwaniczko in the late 1980s. Crandall, now retired, was a group leader in scientific research.
“I was a boss, but we became colleagues and fished and camped out together,” said Crandall. “Eugene was very intelligent.”
“He and I built three labs together,” said former co-worker Brent Nelson of Lakewood.
Iwaniczko “had a knack” for coming up with ideas about materials that would better convert solar power to electricity, said Nelson.
“He did amazing work for us,” said Crandall.
Iwaniczko’s outside interests included studying the Bible, fly-fishing and mushroom hunting.
He was an elder in the Colorado Ecclesia of the Laymen’s Home Bible Ministries and was a frequent speaker at Bible conferences.
He also loved music, especially Chopin, which was playing when the family gathered around him at the end of his life, said his daughter Kasia Iwaniczko of Denver.
Eugene Iwaniczko was born on Feb. 8, 1953, in a work gulag in the Soviet Union. The family moved to Poland, and he studied economics and electronics at a vocational school there.
He married Bogda Skroban on April 7, 1974.
They and their two small daughters moved to the U.S. in 1981, and Iwaniczko did several manual-labor jobs in New Jersey before joining NREL.
The family had planned to move to California, but when they saw the Colorado mountains, they were reminded of Poland and decided to settle here, said Kasia Iwaniczko.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Eugene Iwaniczko is survived by another daughter, Ania Iwaniczko of Denver, and his mother, Stefania Evans of Broomfield. Evans and her late husband, John, changed their last name from Iwaniczko when they moved to the United States.
Eugene Iwaniczko had hoped to live long enough to see daughter Kasia marry David MacLeod on May 28 and was looking forward to dancing at the wedding reception, family members said. The wedding will proceed, and Iwaniczko’s memorial service will be delayed until next month.
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Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
