Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski's Research Group at UC Berkeley
Graduate student Rahul Iyer received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences on May 24th, 2025. His dissertation was titled “Dynamical Modeling and Control of the Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converter.” Post-graduation, Rahul will begin working at Tesla, Inc. on the Power Electronics Controls for Energy Products team. Congratulations!
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.
Rod Bayliss III, a fifth-year PhD student advised by Dr. Robert Pilawa-Podgusrki, won a 2024 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award for his role as a GSI in the inaugural offering of EE 213B, Power Electronics Design, taught by Dr. Jessica Boles. This award honors UC Berkeley GSIs each year for their outstanding work in teaching on the Berkeley campus. The semester before the class was offered, Rod designed and tested a custom buck converter for the class. The students used this board to create their own buck converters, learning practical power converter design and testing skills.
BPEC Director Robert Pilawa-Podgurski was elevated to IEEE fellow in the 2024 class, “For contributions to hybrid switched capacitor power converters”. IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number of fellows selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth of one percent of the total voting Institute membership. Robert received his award at IEEE ECCE in Phoenix this past year. This is a great recognition of the all the hard work by past and present BPEC students!
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/
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/
We are pleased to introduce the newest members of our PhD cohort at the Pilawa Group: Emmi Wyttenbach, Dennis Woo, and Shuyu Zhang.
Emmi Wyttenbach joins us from Cornell University, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in 2024. During her time at Cornell, she conducted power electronics research under Prof. Khurram Afridi, focusing on the development of active energy buffer solutions. Outside of her academic pursuits, Emmi is an avid soccer player and enjoys running and swimming.
Shuyu Zhang completed her Bachelor’s degree at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in China in 2023, followed by Master’s studies at Stanford University before joining Berkeley. With a passion for Anime, comics, and games (ACG), Shuyu has been an active cosplayer at anime conventions since 2016. She also has a keen interest in photography.
Dennis Woo graduated from Stanford with a Bachelor’s degree in 2023 and a Master’s degree in 2024. His research background includes high-frequency power electronics and wide-bandgap semiconductor materials. Outside of work, Dennis enjoys exploring the outdoors,
and he spends his time with photography, soccer, volleyball, and climbing.
We look forward to supporting their growth and contributions to the group and are excited for the perspectives they bring!
Having spent the past four years with UC Berkeley, Dr. Ellis is moving to the University of California Santa Cruz — Baskin School of Engineering. Here his research group will be hosted at UCSC’s Westside Research Park, a stone’s throw from Natural Bridges State Beach.
During his time at UC Berkeley, Dr. Ellis collaborated extensively with BPEC researchers, contributing to the development of high-density power electronics and renewable energy systems. His teaching contributions have also earned him UC Berkeley’s recognition for “teaching effectiveness that greatly exceeds the departmental average”.
The Pilawa-Group would like to wish him the best of luck in his continuing academic career!