Conferences

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 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!

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



Four EECS students in Robert Pilawa-Podgurski’s lab have won best presentation awards for papers they presented at the 2022 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) in March.  Three Technical Lecture Awards were won by:  undergraduate EECS student Amanda Jackson for “A Capacitively-Isolated Dual Extended LC-Tank Converter with 50% Two-Phase Operation at Even Conversion Ratios;” graduate student Samantha Coday for “Design and Implementation of a (Flying) Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converter;” and graduate student Kelly Fernandez for “A Charge Injection Loss Compensation Method for a Series-Stacked Buffer to Reduce Current and Voltage Ripple in Single-Phase Systems.”  Graduate student Rose Abramson won a Technical Dialogue Award for “Core Size Scaling Law of Two-Phase Coupled Inductors — Demonstration in a 48-to-1.8 V MLB-Pol Converter.”   The Technical Sessions showcased the best, peer-reviewed papers that described “new design ideas” and “innovative solutions” in “all areas of technical interest for the practicing power electronics professional.” The dialogue sessions concentrated on papers “with a more specialized focus.”  APEC is the premier conference in the field of power electronics.

Submitted by Magdalene L. Crowley on April 26, 2022 – 2:12pm

Amanda Jackson, Samantha Coday, Kelly Fernandez, and Rose Abramson win IEEE APEC best presentation awards | EECS at UC Berkeley