In 1979–1980, he was a visiting staff member at Laboratories RCA Limited in Zurich, Switzerland.
He was appointed as head of the Kinematic Systems group at RCA Laboratories in 1980.
[1] He later worked for Thomson Consumer Electronics and was the manager of the Materials Science Branch at the National Renewable Energy Lab.
[2] Dr. Staebler has performed research investigations on photochromism in materials, electrochromism, storage of holograms in electro-optic crystals, plus amorphous silicon solar cells produced by discharge.
[1] In 1980 he worked with Christopher R. Wronski to study light-induced metastable changes in the properties of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H);[3][4] now known as the Staebler–Wronski effect.