Awards

BPEC researchers Syed Tahmid Mahbub and Nagesh Patle are recipients of the 2025 Graduate Research Grants from the nonprofit organization Hearts to Humanity Eternal (H2H8). This broadly defined award is granted to thirty graduate researchers each year to fund research that improves world-affecting problems like climate change or furthers advancements in medicine, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and more. Nagesh’s graduate research centers upon ultra-efficient, ultra-dense hybrid switched-capacitor power converters for data center and automotive systems to ease the power delivery limits that constrain modern AI and advanced computing. Tahmid’s graduate research addresses practical challenges in power electronics to help accelerate the adoption of renewable energy and electric transportation, and to reduce power consumption in data centers.

Read Tahmid’s and Nagesh’s features in the H2H8 EECS page here: https://h2h8.com/explorer-categories/electrical-engineering-computer-sciences/

Graduate student Nagesh Patle received the 2025 Timothy B. Campbell Innovation Award, which is granted once per year to a computer science or electrical engineering graduate student who demonstrates a spirit of innovation, collaboration, and creativity in their work and method. The award honors the memory of Timothy B. Campbell, a former Ph.D. student working on digital fabrication and the human-computer interface at UC Berkeley, before he passed away from cancer in 2015. As part of receiving this award, Nagesh met with the Campbell family to learn more about Timothy’s work, life, and impact. You can watch Nagesh’s acceptance speech in the video below, and read more about the Timothy B. Campbell Innovation Award at this link: http://campbellscholar.org/. Past winners of the award are listed at this page: https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Students/Awards/100/.

Visiting Ph.D student Leheng Wang was recognized for his technical achievements and research in the areas of resonant converters in EV chargers and data center power conversion by the IEEE Power Electronics Society. The IEEE PELS Graduate Studies Fellowships are awarded yearly to visiting scholars whose work aligns closely with the mission of PELS. Leheng Wang is a 4th year student visiting the Pilawa Group from the Kai Sun Group at Tsinghua University in China. Read more here: https://www.ieee-pels.org/announcements/congratulations-to-our-2025-pels-award-winners/ and here: https://www.ieee-pels.org/awards/graduate-studies-fellowship-and-john-g-kassakian-fellowship/. We are ecstatic that Leheng has been able to join us these past few months!

Syed Tahmid Mahbub has been named one of the 2025 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellows, a national, merit-based award granted to new Americans pursuing research at the graduate level. He is recognized both for his award-winning research in the Pilawa Group and for his educational contributions to multiple universities in the United States. Tahmid’s research in the Pilawa Group centers around reducing datacenter power consumption and facilitating the adoption of renewable energy and electrified transportation. He has contributed as a teaching assistant both to the power electronics curricula at the University of California, Berkeley and to embedded systems curricula at his undergraduate alma mater, Cornell University. Tahmid also maintains a popular blog to help budding engineers navigate educational resource scarcity. You can read more about Tahmid’s award at this link: https://pdsoros.org/fellows/syed-tahmid-mahbub/

Three researchers from the Pilawa Research Group received prestigious awards for outstanding oral and poster presentations at the 40th IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC 2025), held in Atlanta, GA. APEC is the premier conference in power electronics, attracting leading experts worldwide.

Syed Tahmid Mahbub, a second-year EE Ph.D student advised by EECS Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, received the Best Oral Presentation Award for his talk titled “Analysis and Implementation of Minimum-Sensor Capacitor Voltage Estimators for Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converters.”

Nagesh Patle, a third-year EE Ph.D student advised by EECS Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, earned the Best Poster Presentation Award for his work on “Achieving Soft-Charging and Over 20% Input Current Ripple Reduction in a 48-to-6 V Dickson Converter Using 3-Phase Split-Phase Control.”

Yicheng Zhu, a postdoctoral scholar and EECS alumnus, advised by EECS Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, was recognized with the Best Oral Presentation Award for his talk titled “Design-Oriented Modeling and Multi-Objective Optimization of Two-Phase Coupled Inductors in Multiphase PWM Converters.”

The APEC Best Presentation Awards recognize outstanding contributions based on several criteria: the quality and design of presentation slides, the clarity and effectiveness of delivery, and the presenter’s ability to engage with and respond to audience questions.

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/