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Pilawa Research Group

Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski's Research Group at UC Berkeley

Dennis Woo

Yicheng Zhu receives Teaching Effectiveness Award

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EECS grad Yicheng Zhu has received a Teaching Effectiveness Award for 2024.

The Graduate Division’s Teaching Effectiveness Award for GSIs honors those who devise solutions to teaching or learning problems they have identified in their classes and write them up in a one-page essay. These essays are published on the GSI Center website for use by instructors.

Zhu’s essay, “Fostering Student Engagement: The Power of Live Class Demonstrations,” emphasizes his approach to enhancing student engagement in large lecture formats. Through the implementation of interactive group activities and targeted feedback mechanisms during the 2023 semester, he successfully created a more inclusive environment that encouraged student participation and fostered a deeper understanding of the material.

Yicheng Zhu is a postdoctoral scholar and Bakar Innovation Fellow advised by Robert Pilawa-Podgurski.

Submitted by nluechin on October 17, 2024

https://eecs.berkeley.edu/news/vivek-bharadwaj-and-yicheng-zhu-receive-teaching-effectiveness-award/

Francesca Giardine and Kelly Fernandez win Best Paper Award at ECCE – Europe

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Graduate students Francesca Giardine, Kelly Fernandez (PhD, Fall 2023), along with Dr. Robert Pilawa-Podgurski have won Best Paper Award at IEEE Energy Conversion Conference and Expo – Europe.

They presented A Two-Stage Non-Isolated Hybrid Switched-Capacitor Microinverter Utilizing a Fixed-Ratio Resonant DC-DC Stage with Startup Functionality and Flying Capacitor Multilevel DC-AC Stage. Their work demonstrated a 500W two-stage microinverter solution for residential scale solar that uses exclusively hybrid switched-capacitor converter topologies to convert a 35V DC voltage to a 240V AC voltage. The hardware prototype achieved a competitive power density and efficiency, meeting the growing need for compact solutions for residential-scale renewables.

The paper was presented at ECCE – Europe in Darmstadt, Germany. ECCE brings together academics and industry professionals from around the world to exchange ideas about the energy transition. The best papers were chosen based on the quality of the technical results, paper, and presentation.

Submitted by Sarah Douglas on September 5, 2024

https://bpec.berkeley.edu/pilawa-group-graduate-students-win-best-paper-award-at-ecce-europe/

Rahul Iyer and Tahmid Mahbub Win Best Paper Award at IEEE INTELEC 2024

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Rahul K. Iyer, S. Tahmid Mahbub, and Robert C.N. Pilawa-Podgurski have won the Best Student Paper Award at the 2024 IEEE International Communications Energy Conference (INTELEC) for their paper “Quasi- Two-Level Switching for Active Balancing of Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converters Under Light-Load Conditions” (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10678933/)

Recent work in the Pilawa group has highlighted the design of “active-balancing” controllers to ensure the safe operation of high-performance Flying Capacitor Multilevel (FCML) converters during system transients. This work builds on broader efforts to study the converter dynamics and design stable high-bandwidth controllers. In particular, this work highlights techniques to ensure stable converter operation when the load current is small. Compared to prior work relying on Phase-Shifted Pulse-Width Modulation, the proposed switching scheme enables active balancing at average load currents approaching and equal to zero. The conference paper and oral presentation given at IEEE INTELEC 2024 highlight the proposed switching and control methods and showcase the practical implementation of the controller on industry-standard digital signal processor hardware.

They are continuing to work on additional characterization of the balancing controller at different operating conditions, and aim to apply the proposed technique to demonstrate safe startup of the converter at light-load conditions.

Submitted by Sarah Douglas on October 20, 2024

https://bpec.berkeley.edu/rahul-iyer-and-tahmid-mahbub-win-best-paper-award-at-ieee-intelec-2024/