PELS Member at Large Election - 2023-2025 - OPEN! Please vote!

Vivek Agarwal received the B.Sc. degree in Physics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi Univ. in 1985 followed by an integrated masters' degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1990 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, in 1994. After a stint with Statpower Technologies, Burnaby, BC, Canada, as a Research Engineer during 1994–1995, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology–Bombay, where he is currently an institute Chair Professor. His research interests are mainly in the field of power electronics with focus on power quality issues, renewable energy conversion, microgrids, high frequency link power conversion and electric vehicles. He has published more than 375 papers in peer reviewed journals (mostly IEEE Transactions) and conference proceedings and has 17 patents (filed/granted) to his credit. He has carried out several government and industry sponsored projects. He has been on the organizing committees of numerous IEEE conferences. Currently, he also represents PELS on the IEEE JPV steering committee. Dr. Agarwal serves on the editorial boards of the IEEE Tran. on Power Electronics as Co-Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Tran. on Industry Applications as an associate editor. He is a past editor of the IEEE Tran. on Smart Grids. He was elevated to IEEE fellow grade in 2015 for contributions to solar PV technology. He is also a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indian Academy of Science (I.A.Sc.), Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and IETE.

Statement

I feel honoured that the IEEE PELS Nominations Committee has nominated me as a Member at Large candidate for ADCOM. If I am elected, my focus will be as follows:

1.     In spite of IEEE PELS contributing immensely to the growth of power electronics, there are certain sections of society who are not aware about PELS activities. I want to work towards creating more awareness about PELS so that they can participate and benefit from its activities.

2.     I want to work towards making PELS activities and events more affordable and accessible to the younger generation of students and professionals (especially women) by way of concessions and incentives.

3.     I would like to explore if it is possible for PELS to recognize and support innovative work in power electronics by way of scholarships to meritorious and needy students. 

4.     Covid 19 pandemic was dreadful but it has given a new dimension to technical interactions with remote technical lectures, discussions and webinars becoming common. I want to make use of this new situation to promote such technical interactions.

5.     Power electronics is a highly practical field, with major developments taking place in industries. I will work on promoting easy industry-academia interactions through both online and offline forums and technical lectures by world renowned industry experts.

7.     I will try to explore, if PELS can contribute towards translating some of the pioneering technical articles written in other languages into English and vice versa. This will give PELS a lot of visibility.

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Dr. Mahshid Amirabadi (S’05–M’13–SM’21) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran, in 2002, the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran, Tehran, in 2006, and the Ph.D. degree

She joined the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA, in 2013 as an Assistant Professor. Since August 2015, she has been with Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA, where she is currently an Associate Professor. Her main research interests and experience include power converter topologies, universal power converters, renewable energy systems, variable speed drives, and wireless power transfer systems.

Dr. Amirabadi was the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2021, as well as the second prize paper award of IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics in 2020 and 2021. Dr. Amirabadi has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (2016 to now), IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics on Power Electronics (2020 to 2022), and IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications (2014 to 2020).

Statement:

Power electronics is essential to many systems including renewable energy systems, electric vehicles, and high-performance motor drives. Power Electronics Society (PELS) has had a key role in building knowledge on the latest advancements of this field and connecting power electronics engineers and researchers worldwide.

As an active member of PELS, I have had the privilege to contribute to technical committee activities and conference organizations. As a PELS Administrative Committee (AdCom) member, I would work with PELS leadership team to maintain the prestigious status of PELS and further improve the quality of PELS activities by:

·         Providing more opportunities for junior faculty, industry members, and graduate students to get involved with PELS to help this society benefit from a more diverse pool of ideas,

·         Initiating more workshops, seminars, and educational activities on emerging technologies and applications of power electronics, and

Antonio Cardoso received the Dipl. Eng., Dr. Eng., and Habilitation degrees from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, in 1985, 1995 and 2008, respectively, all in Electrical Engineering. From 1985 until 2011, he was with the University of Coimbra, Portugal, where he was Director of the Electrical Machines Laboratory. Since 2011, he has been with the University of Beira Interior (UBI), Covilhã, Portugal, where he is Full Professor at the Department of Electromechanical Engineering and Director of CISE - Electromechatronic Systems Research Centre (http://cise.ubi.pt). He was Vice-Chancellor of UBI (2013-2014).
He has been involved as a volunteer for the IEEE Power Electronics Society in different capacities, namely as IEEE Systems Council Primary Representative (2022-present); Member-at-Large (2019-2021); Chair (2020-2021), Vice-Chair (2018-2019) and Secretary (2016-2017) of PELS Technical Committee on Electrical Machines, Drives and Automation; Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics; Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics and IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics; Vice-Chair of the IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition, ECCE (2009, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022); and General Chair of the 10th IEEE International Symposium on Diagnostics for Electric Machines, Power Electronics and Drives, SDEMPED (2015).

He is currently Member of the International Steering Committee of the IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), Member of the International Steering Committee of the IEEE International Machines and Drives Conference (IEMDC), and Chair of the  International Steering Committee of the IEEE International Symposium on Diagnostics for Electric Machines, Power Electronics and Drives (SDEMPED).

Statement

­­­­­­­­ Christina DiMarino is an assistant professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech and faculty in the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES). She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech in 2014 and 2018, respectively. Her research interests include power electronics packaging and high-density integration of wide bandgap power semiconductors. She was a Webber Fellow from 2012 to 2015, and a Rolls-Royce Graduate Fellow from 2016 to 2017. She has received five best paper and presentation awards at international conferences and was awarded the Outstanding New Assistant Professor Award at Virginia Tech in 2022. 

From 2015 to 2018, she was the student membership chair for the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) and was on the PELS Students and Young Professionals (YP) Committee for 4 years. Since 2020, she has been a Member-at-Large for the PELS Administrative Committee. She is also currently the Vice Chair for the PELS Technical Committee 2 on Power Components, Integration, and Power ICs, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, and is a member of the IEEE International Technology Roadmap for Wide-Bandgap Power Semiconductors, Women in Engineering (WIE) Committee, and PELS Mentorship Program. She has also served on the technical committees for several conferences, including the IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE).

Statement:

Although I have been volunteering in PELS for nearly 10 years, I was still not sure how to get involved with certain committees or activities. I realized that other people may feel the same; they may want to get involved, but not know how. To address this, I helped organize the “WIE, YP, and You: How to Get Involved in PELS and PSMA” event at ECCE 2022. This enabled attendees to talk with long-time PELS volunteers from a variety of committees and activities. Moreover, we created frequently-asked-questions documents for people looking to get involved in these activities and posted them on the PELS website. If elected, I would continue working to make PELS more transparent so that members can easily find ways to get involved in the society and participate in activities of interest to them.

I would also like to further improve the diversity, equity, and inclusion of the society. As a member of the PELS Women in Engineering Committee, I have helped organize events to enhance diversity and help underrepresented members feel welcomed and get engaged. I would to help get more diverse representation on more PELS committees, as well as help with outreach activities to middle schools and high schools to get younger generations excited about power electronics.

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Philip Carne Kjaer (M’92, SM’11) is Chief Specialist in electrical power technology with Vestas Wind Systems, in Denmark, where he has worked since 2003. He holds principal responsibility for technology and product development of converters and HV apparatus, and has previously developed power plant controls, reactive power compensation and energy storage add-ons.

Dr. Kjaer received his M.Sc. in EE from Aalborg University, and his Ph.D. from University of Glasgow, where he was research assistant from 1993 to 1998, working with advanced control of switched reluctance machines and drives. From 1998 to 2003, he was with ABB Corporate Research, Sweden, as development engineer and manager, working on a variety of technologies, including large drives and HVDC. He was part of the team behind the HVDC-VSC connection for offshore compression on the Troll gas platform.

Since 2013, he has been associated part-time professor with Aalborg University, researching in medium voltage dc power conversion. He holds in excess of 100 scientific publications and has over 30 patents granted.

Dr. Kjaer is Eur.Ing and member of FEANI, a Chartered Engineer in the U.K. and has been member of IET since 1994. Since 2010 he has served in Cigré’s Danish National Committee and served 4 years as the Danish representative of Cigré study committee B4. Further, he has been a contributor to multiple IEC working groups. Dr. Kjaer has served on various international steering committees of IEEE and EPE conferences, and acted as reviewer for conferences and journals, alike.

Coming out of office in 2021, he was treasurer since 2009 and member of the executive committee since 2007 of the EPE (European Power Electronics and Drives Association). Dr. Kjaer received the Richard M. Bass Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award 2004.

Statement:  

My expected contributions to IEEE PELS will likely fall under the following headlines:

·         Industry - Renewable generation engineering, supply chain, business development

·         Leadership bridging people, technology & business acumen

·         Europe’s agenda and experience with EPE

Hong Li (S’07–M’09–SM’18) received the B.Sc.degree in electric automatization from Taiyuan University of Technology, China, in 2002, the M.Sc. degree in power electronics and power drives from South China University of Technology, China, in 2005 and the Ph.D. degree from FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, in 2009, respectively. From 2009, she joined the Electrical Engineering School, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China, where she is currently a Professor. Her research interests include time-domain modeling, stability analysis and its applications in power converters system, active EMI suppressing methods for power electronic system and the advanced driver techniques of wide-bandgap power devices. She has published 155 papers, in which about 100 papers are published IEEE journals and conferences.

She is the Publicity Chair of 2022 4th International Conference on Smart Power & Internet Energy Systems held in Beijing, China and was the session chairs of IEEE ECCE 2019 held in Baltimore, USA, IEEE ECCE 2020 (joining online), IPEMC2020-ECCE-Asia, held in Nanjing, China. She is currently served as the vice chair of IEEE PELS Membership Committee–China (MCC) and the chair of WiE subcommittee, IEEE PELS MCC; the vice chair of IEEE PELS Beijing Chapter and the member of IEEE Transportation Technologies Award Committee. She was the chair of the first women scientists working committee, China Power Supply Society (CPSS), from 2022, she serves as the Chair of Electromagnetic Compatibility Specialized Committee, CPSS. She is also currently served as the Associate Editors of IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Open Journal of Industrial Electronics Society.

Statement:

As a member of the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) for the past 13 years, I am very honored to be nominated as a candidate for PELS Member at Large Election by the IEEE PELS Nomination Committee.

The field of Power Electronics has being experienced major growth worldwide for recent decades, and power electronics has been the cornerstone of energy efficient and flexible utilization in the future. This provides an excellent opportunity for IEEE PELS to promote healthy development of the field and maximize its positive impacts globally and better serve the mission of IEEE PELS “foster the development and facilitate the exchange of scientific and technological knowledge in Power Electronics that benefits members, the profession and humanity ”. 

In the past ten years, I have been actively involved in PLES activities and tried to promote power electronics technology development and member numbers in China, including PELS call for papers, conference organizations, joining TC1 and TC6 technical committee activities, student guidance and assistance in organizing activities of WiE in ECCE and ECCE-Asia. In addition, I co-organized lots of academic activities in PELS Beijing chapter in China. In the field of power electronics, I am actively building the exchange platform for domestic and international female scholars and young professionals, regularly issued the research achievements in the field of power electronics and the demand for Industry, so as to broaden the participation of under-represented groups.

As an AdCom member, if elected, I will make efforts in the following areas:  

-Promote the power electronics technologies suitable for lighting and household electricity consumption in remote and poor areas. 

-Organizing rich WiE activities to develop female members in China and Asia-Pacific region, increase the proportion of female members in PELS, especially in China, since the proportion of female member in IEEE PELS in China section is only about 8%.   

-Carrying out the technical exchange and popular science activities in the field of power electronics through webinars, distinguished lectures, conferences, and publications. 

-Promote the intersection and integration of power electronics with system disciplines, control disciplines and artificial intelligence disciplines, so as to promote the development of power electronics technology.

 Tsorng-Juu (Peter) Liang (IEEE Fellow 2016) received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA, in 1990 and 1993, respectively.  He is currently a Distinguished Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, where he was the Vice Dean of College of EECS from 2016 to 2021. He is currently on the Board of Directors of Catcher Technology, Taiwan and was on the Board of Directors of Leadtrend Technology, Compucase Enterprise, and Epileds Technologies, Taiwan. Dr. Liang has been the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS (JESTPE), since January 1, 2022. He is the Vice President of the Taiwan Power Electronics Association and an Energy Conversion Congress and Expo (ECCE) Asia Coordinating Committee Member. Prof. Liang received the Outstanding Contributions Award from the Taiwan Power Electronics Association in 2018. He was the Chair of the IEEE Tainan Section and the Power Electronics Society’s (PELS) Technical Committee 6, technical program committee member of ECCE, the Program Chair of the 2013 IEEE International Future Energy Electronics Conference (IFEEC), the General Co-Chair of the 2015 IEEE IFEEC, and the General Chair of the 2017 IEEE IFEEC-ECCE Asia.  He is currently on the International Editorial Advisory Board of the IEEJ JOURNAL INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, the Advisory Board of the Journal of Power Electronics, and the Editorial Board of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS. 

 

Statement:  

The IEEE Power Electronics Society is one of the fastest growing societies in the IEEE. Thanks to the contributions of academia and industry researchers, applications of power electronics techniques in many important domains, such as sustainable energy systems and electrification transportations, has grown rapidly.  If I become the PELS AdCom member, I will work on the following area especially:

1. I will continue to work with PELS leadership team and provide support to the new VP of the Products operations.

2. Young members: Young members and students are the future of the Power Electronics Society. Hence, organizing PELS activities for them and involving them in various levels of PELS activities is essential.

3. Cross-chapter activities and summer education programs: Local activities are critical for encouraging young professionals to participate in PELS. Getting two or more chapters to organize cross-chapter workshops and summer education programs are good opportunities to keep chapters growing.

4. Connecting local power electronics related societies with PELS chapters: The regular/summer education events for PELS chapters could be enhanced by the participation of industry researchers from the local PELS members.

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Dr. Sudip Mazumder is Fellow of the IEEE (2016) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2020). He was a PELS Distinguished Lecturer between 2016-2019. He is the Editor-at-Large for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics and is/was a Guest-EiC for JESTPE (2022, 2020) and TPEL (2014). He was the Chair for IEEE PEDG 2021 Conference. He was the Chair for PELS TC on Sustainable Energy Systems (TC5) between 2015-2020. He is a PELS Administrative-Committee Member.

He received his Ph.D. degree from Virginia Tech in 2001. He is a Professor and Director of Laboratory for Energy and Switching-Electronic Systems at the University of Illinois Chicago since 2001. He is the President of NextWatt LLC since 2008. He has 30+ years of professional experience, held R&D and design positions in leading industries, and served as a Technical Consultant for several industries. His current areas of interests are Switching-sequence and switching-transition based control of power-electronics systems; Power electronics for renewable energy, micro/smart grids, energy storage; Wide-bandgap (GaN/SiC) power electronics; and Optically-triggered semiconductor devices. His research has yielded ~60 sponsored-research projects encompassing 37M USD, 265+ publications, 13 patents, 11 book/book chapters, and 115+ invited/plenary/distinguished/keynote presentations.

He is the recipient of University of Illinois’ Distinguished-Researcher-of-the-Year Award (2020), Inventor of the Year Award (2014), and University Scholar Award (2013), IEEE International Future Energy Challenge Award (2005), Office-of-Naval-Research Young Investigator Award (2005), National-Science-Foundation CAREER Award (2003), and PELS-Transaction-Prize-Paper Award (2022, 2002) and highlighted paper (2022, 2018) and IEEE Conference-Paper-Awards (2013, 2007).

Statement

I have served PELS in multiple capacities including TC5 Chair, TC1 Vice-Chair, Member-at-Large, AdCom Member, Membership Chair, DL/regional-DL, TPEL Editor-at-Large, ITRD Working-Group Chair, ITRW Member, and EBL involvement.

I have taken multiple new initiatives and have taken our society with the help and guidance of our members to new growth and visibility. As the TC5 Chair (2015-2020), I took the following initiatives: a) About a ten-fold increase in TC5 budget for new/ongoing initiatives/growth; b) Technical-Achievement Award; c) Best-Paper Awards; d) Travelling-Lecturer Program; e) Webinars; f) Special-Sessions at ECCE; g) Outreach through promotion/support of ACEPT/DEAS/CPERE/CWD/Ee2019 conferences; h) JESTPE special issues; and i) Aligning TC5 with PELS’s energy-access/long-range-planning/technical initiatives (EBL/FEPPCON/ITRW/ITRD) for support-build-up/outreach.

Between 2021-2022, as the TC1 Vice-Chair for Conference, I have worked with COMPEL (2022-2025) and ICDCM (2023) Chairs/Committee-members towards conference approvals at TC/Conference-Committee/AdCoM levels and budgeting/logistics handling. Between 2019-2022, as TPEL Editor-at-Large, I have served the journal regarding editorial reviews, conflict resolutions, and award-committee services. Between 2020-2022, as the member-at-large, I have participated in multiple PELS-committee meetings getting closer operational understanding and worked with AdCom towards clearance of TC motions. Since 2020, I serve ITRD as a Working-Group Chair on Power-Semiconductor Devices culminating in a comprehensive report, a 2022 JESTPE special issue, and a prospective roadmap.

  I have worked closely with Membership/Conference/Operations/Standards/Administrative Committees to achieve some of these goals and comprehend roles/responsibilities of committees and operational-structure/policies of PELS. Therefore, I feel that as a Member-at-Large I can bring that multi-pronged experience to the benefit, productivity, growth, and visibility of PELS.  

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Professor Brendan McGrath (M’99 – SM’16) received the BE(Hons) degree in Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering and the BSc degree in Applied Mathematics and Physics from Monash University, Australia, in 1997. In 2003 he was awarded the PhD degree from the same University for his research focused on modulation principles for multilevel power electronic converters.

Professor McGrath has been a faculty member at Australian Universities for seventeen years. From 2005 he was with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Newcastle, and in 2007 he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering at Monash University. Since 2010 he has been with the School of Engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia. His research interests include the fundamentals of modulation and control of power electronic converters, applications of power electronics technology to electrical energy systems including microgrids, and dynamic control phenomena. To date he has published over 190 journal and conference articles within this research domain.

Professor McGrath is a member of the IEEE Power Electronics (PELS), Industrial Applications (IAS) and Industrial Electronics (IES) technical societies, and he has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (2016 – present), the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications (2009 – 2016) and the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (2012 – 2015).

Statement

My association with PELS began when I joined the IEEE in 1999 as a PhD student, and I have been actively contributing to the society ever since, as both a researcher and a volunteer. In particular I have supported PELS conference and journal publication activities, as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (since 2016), as a Technical Program Chair (2013 IEEE ECCE-Asia Downunder conference), a topic/session chair and reviewer for PELS sponsored conferences (e.g. ECCE), and also as a tutorial presenter. I have served PELS as a AdCom Member-at-Large from 2020 to 2022, and I am also a PELS representative on the ECCE Asia Steering Committee. I am active in the PELS sister societies of IAS and IES, where I have taken on the role of Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications (2009 to 2016) and also for the IEEE Transaction on Industrial Informatics (2012 to 2015). This engagement has made me well aware of the concerns and interests of members from each society. In addition my role as an academic professor ensures that I have a strong interest and commitment to the development of the power electronics discipline, and I can bring to the AdCom a broad understanding of the factors driving change in engineering education, both at undergraduate and higher degree levels. I would welcome the opportunity to contribute to the PELS AdCom, to help the society grow and meet the needs of its members as the discipline of power electronics continues to evolve. 

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Dr. Suh’s major service to PELS and IEEE are listed below:

• ECCE-Asia Coordination Committee Chair

• Organizing Committee Chair of ICPE 2023 – ECCE Asia

• Global Relation Board Member of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics interfacing IEEE

• Associate Editor in IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

• Vice chair of Industrial Power Converters Committee of IEEE IAS

• Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE IAS

 

Statement: As a Member-at-Large, I’d like to give my sincere contribution in the following aspects.

• Grow Together in Global Relations through Mutual Respect

PELS has been improving its visibility in most parts of the world. In order to further enhance its reputation and membership size, active support from regional academic/industrial communities is indispensable. I have spent 1 year in Middle-east Asia, 2 years in Africa, 4 years in Europe, 7 years in the US, and 40 years in Korea. Based on a wide spectrum of my international experience, I’d like to help PELS AdCom colleagues to find a harmonious way in global relations through mutual respect.

• Make More Innovations in Industry-Academia Collaboration through Balanced Role-Sharing

Power electronics has the core value in the industrial application aspect. Academia and industry are two major thrust sources to bring a sustainable advancement of power electronics. I have 10 years of experience as an industrial engineer and 15 years of experience as a university professor. Balanced and cooperative role-sharing between academia and industry is very important to achieve innovative R&D results. I’d like to give my contribution to PELS AdCom to make more effective and healthy industry-academia collaboration through balanced role-sharing and active participation from academia and industry.