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EE researcher Ben Liao, working with Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, has received the Best Presentation Award at the 2024 IEEE Power and Energy Conference at Illinois (PECI) – a student-directed power and energy conference held annually at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The PECI Best Presentation Award is determined both by conference directors and input from attendees.

Ben received the Best Presentation Award for his work on designing and building a high-power, electronically-controlled, modular resistive load bank. The proposed design overcomes testing limitations in commercial solutions when characterizing state-of-the-art converters. The architecture can easily be extended and modified to suit various other applications where an electronically-controlled resistive load is desired. For more information, please consult the full paper, available at this link.

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/



Graduate students Kelly Fernandez and Maggie Blackwell successfully delivered their dissertation talks and graduated this December. Kelly’s talk was titled “High-Performance Grid-Tied Single-Phase Power Converter Design with Applications in Electric Vehicle Charging and Residential Photovoltaic Systems”, and Maggie’s talk was titled “Switching Strategies for Hybrid Switched-Capacitor DC-DC Power Converters.” Congratulations to our BPEC graduates!

We are delighted to introduce Tahmid Mahbub, who joins our research group at Cal after six years of invaluable industry experience at Apple. Tahmid’s journey from his undergraduate studies at Cornell University, where he was recognized as the Best Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, to his tenure at one of the world’s leading tech companies, underscores his passion for excellence and innovation.

Originating from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Tahmid’s early adventures in electronics, documented on his blog, reflect his innate curiosity and drive for exploration. Despite his demanding schedule, Tahmid finds joy in sports, particularly soccer (number 9), cricket, and tennis, as well as friendly competitions in games like Catan and FIFA.

Tahmid’s palate is as diverse as his interests, as he seeks out the best burrito spots in Berkeley and indulges in his love for Kacchi biryani. His affinity for the unconventional extends to his favorite getaway, Death Valley National Park, embodying his adventurous spirit and appreciation for the extraordinary.

As Tahmid embarks on this new chapter with us, we extend our warmest welcome and look forward to the exciting collaborations and discoveries that lie ahead. Please join us in welcoming Tahmid to our research family at Cal!

Dr. Coday will be joining MIT as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, as part of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). The Coday Research group will focus on high-performance power converters and systems to enable future electric aircraft, space travel, and renewable integration. In addition, Dr. Coday is interested in the modeling, design, and control of high-efficiency and lightweight converters utilizing the advantages of capacitor-based and multilevel topologies.

While at UC Berkeley, Dr. Coday worked on several hybrid switched-capacitor designs for aerospace applications, and was a highly valued mentor, teaching assistant (receiving the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award), and IEEE PELS founding member and organizer.

The Pilawa group will miss Dr. Coday, and wishes her all the best with her research and future endeavors!

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



EECS Ph.D. student Yicheng Zhu (advisor: Robert Pilawa-Podgurski) has won an NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship. Zhu, whose research interests include enabling technologies for high-performance electric power conversion, is one of five recipients of the fellowship, which awards up to $50,000 to each recipient in support of research in areas such as accelerated computing, with fellows tackling projects in deep learning, robotics, computer vision, computer graphics, circuits, autonomous vehicles, and programming systems. Awardees are selected from a highly competitive, global applicant pool and will participate in a summer internship with NVIDIA. Spanning 22 years, NVIDIA has awarded $6 million to nearly 200 students to support graduate research. “Our fellowship recipients are among the most talented graduate students in the world,” said NVIDIA Chief Scientist Bill Dally. “They’re working on some of the most important problems in computer science, and we’re delighted to support their research.” Zhu’s research will explore extreme-performance hybrid switched-capacitor voltage regulation modules for ultra-high-power GPUs, which enables highly efficient and ultra-compact vertical power delivery with fast transient response.

Submitted by Matthew Santillan on January 25, 2023 – 4:51pm

Yicheng Zhu wins NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship | EECS at UC Berkeley

NVIDIA Awards $50,000 Research Fellowships to PhD Students



EECS graduate students use leftover printed circuit boards (PCBs) to create art. The result is a beautiful Cal EECS bear in Berkeley blue, centered over the letters E-E-C-S in green, all made up of PCBs, on a towering six by seven plywood base held together by very-high-bond (VHB) double-sided tape. Rahul Iyer, an EECS Ph.D. student advised by EE Prof. Pilawa-Podgurski, had the idea over Thanksgiving break to make use of what would otherwise be e-waste. With the help of Rod Bayliss III, Maggie Blackwell, Sahana Krishnan and Nathan Brooks, all Ph.D. students advised by Pilawa, they set out to repurpose the leftover PCBs, first by printing the silhouette of the Cal bear on a mounting board, tracing the outline of the bear, and then using VHB to tape the PCBs onto the mounting board, filling in the outline. “It was a great bonding activity over Thanksgiving break, especially recollecting projects and past memories when we came across some of the boards,” said Rahul. “I’m so glad I had an opportunity to share in this creative endeavor with my peers. Looking forward to another project in a few years when we collect more PCBs!”

Submitted by Matthew Santillan on December 15, 2022 – 4:01pm

EECS graduate students turn e-waste into art | EECS at UC Berkeley



EECS graduate students Roderick Bayliss III (advisor: Robert Pilawa-Podgurski) and Vivek Nair (advisor: Dawn Song) have been selected to receive 2022 Hertz Fellowships.  One of the most prestigious awards of its kind, Hertz Fellowships support PhD students whose research show “the greatest potential to tackle society’s most urgent problems.” Bayliss is developing more efficient and power-dense types of power converters—devices that change the current, voltage or frequency of electrical energy—and inductors, which store energy, to help reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. He earned his B.S. and M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from MIT.  Nair is developing cutting-edge cryptographic techniques to defend digital infrastructure against sophisticated cyberthreats. He was the youngest-ever recipient of a B.A. and Master’s in computer science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and is the founder of Multifactor.com.  Their fellowships will fund up to five years of graduate research with “the freedom to pursue innovative ideas wherever they may lead.”  Hertz Fellows also receive lifelong professional support, including mentoring and networking with a powerful community of more than 1,200 researchers.

Submitted by Magdalene L. Crowley on June 6, 2022 – 11:19am

Rod Bayliss and Vivek Nair win 2022 Hertz Fellowships | 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