Conferences

Graduate students Nagesh Patle and Seokwon Harry Choi received Second Place in the Design Methodology Track of the Student Demo Contest at the 2026 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), held in Vancouver, Canada, October 4–8. Conference details

Their demonstration, “Automated Topology Discovery and Hardware-Aware Evaluation of Hybrid Switched-Capacitor Converters for 48-V Intermediate-Bus Applications,” showcased an end-to-end automated framework for exploring power-converter designs.

The framework systematically discovers feasible hybrid switched-capacitor topologies, evaluates their soft-charging capability and resonant operation, and selects commercial components to estimate efficiency and power density. This connects topology exploration with practical component choices, helping designers compare candidate converters against the requirements of a particular application.

The project was advised by Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski and supported by the Berkeley Power and Energy Center (BPEC). During the demonstration sessions, the team shared the framework with researchers and industry attendees and discussed its methods and potential applications.

Congratulations, Nagesh and Harry!

Graduate students Nagesh Patle and Khalid Durani received Best Oral Presentation Awards for their respective papers at the 27th IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL 2026), held at Downing College in Cambridge, United Kingdom, in July 2026.

Nagesh presented “A Switching-Bus Interleaved Doubler (SID) Converter for Regulated 48-V-to-12-V Applications,” coauthored with Haifah B. Sambo, Shuyu Zhang, and Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski. The work addresses a challenge in data center power delivery: maintaining a stable 12 V intermediate supply as the upstream bus voltage varies from 40 to 60 V.

The proposed converter uses a switching-bus architecture to eliminate bulky intermediate passive components. A split-phase timing strategy maintains soft-charging operation while accounting for the reduction in effective capacitance that ceramic capacitors experience under applied voltage. The paper reports an experimentally validated hardware prototype with a peak efficiency of 97.8% and a power density exceeding 6,200 W/in³ at a nominal 48 V input.

Khalid presented “A Multilevel Series-Capacitor Buck Converter with Duty Cycle Extension through Switched Node Voltage Decoupling,” coauthored with Nathan Biesterfeld and Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski. The work introduces a new converter topology for efficient, high-ratio voltage conversion in data center power systems. It targets lower intermediate bus voltages, which can improve overall system efficiency and support compact downstream voltage regulators.

The topology addresses a duty-cycle limitation arising from coupling between switched-node voltages in series-capacitor buck converters. By incorporating a pair of decoupling switches, the proposed architecture allows these voltages to operate independently, extending the usable duty-cycle range. A four-level, two-branch hardware prototype demonstrated 48-V-to-4-V conversion, with measured efficiency reaching 95.7% including gate-drive losses.

Nagesh also received a Student Travel Award.

Congratulations to both teams!

Details of the technical sessions are available in the COMPEL 2026 programme.

Graduate student Nagesh Patle received a Best Poster Award in Theme 3 at the 2026 Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity (CUbiC) Annual Review, held at Columbia University in New York on June 24–25.

His poster, “Ultra-Dense, High-Efficiency DC-DC Power Conversion for Connectivity and AI Applications,” presented early work on compact, efficient power delivery for computing and communication systems. The research explores hybrid switched-capacitor converter topologies and coupled magnetics to reduce the size of power converters while supporting fast changes in load.

Nagesh attended the meeting with Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, joining researchers and industry partners to share the group’s work and discuss ongoing research across the center.

Read more about the meeting and student awards in Columbia Engineering’s event coverage.

Graduate students Rod Bayliss III, Emmi Wyttenbach, and Tahmid Mahbub were recently recognized with best presentation awards for their work at APEC 2026 at San Antonio, Texas! Their work spans three compelling application spaces of switched capacitor converters. Rod was awarded for his work titled “Design and Implementation of a Three-Phase Eight-Level Flying Capacitor Multilevel Rectifier for Future Data Center Power Delivery,” in which he demonstrates the rectification of a 480V grid to a high voltage, 800V DC bus. This research helps to pave the way for high voltage power delivery in data center applications, and can be read at the following link. Emmi’s work also has important implications for the future of data center power delivery. She was awarded for her work titled “An Output Voltage Maximizer for Efficiency Improvement in Resonant Switched-Capacitor Converters,” in which she presents a control technique to improve the efficiency of resonant switched-capacitor converters, a popular choice for intermediate bus converters. Finally, Tahmid was awarded for his work on the design of an exceptionally gravitationally dense power converter for more-electric aircraft DC bus generation. His work is titled “An 8-level Flying Capacitor Multilevel Boost Converter for High-Voltage Power Distribution in Electric Aircraft” and helps pave a path forward for realizable electric flight in the future.

Congratulations to Tahmid, Emmi, and Rod on their incredible achievements!

Third-year graduate student Tahmid Mahbub was recently recognized in the student demo competition at APEC 2026 in San Antonio, Texas, winning 2nd place overall. His work, titled “A Novel Multi-Kilowatt Thermal Test Vehicle Utilizing Off-the-Shelf Power Transistors,” demonstrates the generation of localized hot spot patterns for the testing of cooling systems, particularly those destined for data center power delivery systems. His related work from the 2025 ECTC conference can be read at the following link.

Congratulations, Tahmid, on this achievement!

Graduate student Sahana Krishnan has won a Best Poster Award at the 2025 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference and Expo & Electric Aircrat Technologies Symposium (ITEC) for her work “Design and Implementation of a GaN-Based, Cascaded Isolated DC-DC Converter for Satellite Applications.” Sahana’s innovative research, completed with coauthors Francesca Giardine and Rose Abramson, validates a 150 W, 92% efficient cascaded boost and dual-active bridge power stage for lightweight CubeSat and SmallSat satellite systems, demonstrating the utility of this topology in the extreme environment of space. Sahana’s presentation was one of just three winning selections out of more than 200 posters presented at ITEC 2025.

This work can be read at the following link: https://doi.org/10.1109/ITEC63604.2025.11097988

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 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/

EE grad student Logan Horowitz and post-doc Nathan Miles Ellis, advised by Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, have received awards for outstanding technical presentations at the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC)–the flagship conference in power electronics. 

Logan received a Best Presentation award for his work on a 14-level  Flying-Capacitor-Multilevel inverter for electric vehicles, and Nathan for his work on a 48V-to-1V point-of-load (PoL) converter for aerospace telecommunications and computing applications. Both works demonstrated performance greatly exceeding state-of-the-art capabilities in energy conversion.

The APEC Best Presentation Awards are scored using several criteria, including quality of slides, presentation, and how well the presenter responds to questions. The award is considered a significant professional achievement. APEC 2024 hit record attendance this year, which took place in Long Beach, CA.

Submitted by Gloria Tao on March 25, 2024
https://eecs.berkeley.edu/news/berkeley-eecs-wins-best-presentation-awards-at-ieee-apec/



Two Berkeley EECS graduate students, Haifah Sambo and Logan Horowitz, received separate Technical Session Best Presentation Awards at the 2023 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC), after a rigorous review process that highlights the conference’s most innovative technical solutions. Sambo received a Technical Lecture Award, for her oral presentation of her paper, “Autotuning of Resonant Switched-Capacitor Converters for Zero Current Switching and Terminal Capacitance Reduction,” while Horowitz received a Technical Dialogue Award, for his poster presentation paper of his paper “Decoupling Device for Small Commutation Loop and Improved Switching Performance with Large Power Transistors.” APEC focuses on the practical and applied aspects of the power electronics business and is the premier conference in the field. The technical program includes peer-reviewed papers that cover all areas of technical interest for practicing power electronics professionals. Both Sambo and Horowitz are advised by Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski. 

Submitted by Bennett Agnew on June 12, 2023 – 3:33pm
Two graduate students receive technical awards at IEEE APEC | EECS at UC Berkeley