Updates from Maryland Power Electronics Lab (MPEL)

Led by Professor Alireza Khaligh, the Maryland Power Electronics Lab (MPEL) conducts research in the modeling, simulation, design, and development of power electronics systems. Selected projects include residential solar microinverter, ultra-light power electronic interfaces for micro-robots, bi-directional on-board chargers for electric vehicles, pyroelectric material energy harvesting system design, and regulated transformer rectifier unit for more electric aircrafts.

IEEE International Future Energy Challenge

The MPEL Team recently participated in the 2022 International Future Energy Challenge held at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. After launching in 2000, this annual event challenges university teams in areas of energy and conservation. Each year, a topic is selected, and teams compete to present innovative solutions to the chosen subject. This year’s challenge asked teams to design and build a high efficiency high power density smart solar inverter for microgrid applications.

The University of Maryland MPEL Team was awarded the “Best Team Work Award” at this year’s competition. Team members included ECE graduate students Yidi Shen and Reza Asrar Ghaderloo, and undergrads Syed Aal-E-Ali and Joseph Landry from ECE, and Soroush Etemad from Mechanical Engineering.

MPEL Awarded Multiple Grants

Over the summer, MPEL has been awarded several grants which will contribute to their research in power electronics and transportation electrification:

A High Power Density Motor Controller for Avionic Applications, $170K award, sponsored by Boeing, to develop a high power density motor controller for aerospace application.
A $320K contract to evaluate and design a novel Hybrid Multilevel Converter Topology
A $449K Award from the National Science Foundation to design and develop a Thermally Integrated Traction Inverter
A $93K contract from the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration for Assessing the Capabilities of Electric Vehicles in Freight operations in collaboration with the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology

Graduating Members of MPEL

Nine members of MPEL graduated over the last year. All have used their experience with MPEL to obtain excellent positions in both academia and industry.

Dr. Akshay Singh, Ph.D., Tesla, Inc.
Dr. Yongwan Park, Ph.D., Tesla, Inc.
Dr. Michael D'Antonio, Ph.D., SpaceX
Prof. Apurv Yadav, Ph.D., Post-Doc, Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
Prof. Shiladri Chakraborty, Ph.D., Post-Doc, Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Prof. Jianfei Chen, Ph.D., Post-Doc, Associate Professor, Wuhan University
Ms. Samantha Falco, M.Sc., MITRE
Mr. Casey Beyers, M.Sc., Northrop Grumman
Mr. Chayban Gabech, M.Sc., Design & Development Institute