In the News

Two Special Sessions in memoriam of Prof. Donald Novotny will be held at IEEE ECCE 2022 on Wednesday, October 12, 2022.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty and students won the best paper award at the IEEE/AIAA Transportation Electrification Conference and Electric Aircraft Technologies Symposium (ITEC+EATS) in Anaheim, California, in June 2022.

The team includes Bulent Sarlioglu, the Jean van Bladel Associate Professor in electrical and computer engineering, Thomas Jahns, the Grainger Emeritus Professor of Power Electronics and Electric Machines and PhD students Hao Zeng and James Swanke.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison students is working to provide charging power to Wisconsin communities by developing high-tech Little Free Libraries. Powered by solar energy, eLittle Free Libraries (eLFL) are traditional Little Free Libraries with books, but combined with charging stations for phones and other portable smart devices.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison electrical and computer engineering PhD students, including WEMPEC’s Sangwhee Lee, Nishanth, Shalini Manna and Nathan Peterson, has won first place in the 2022 IEEE/AIAA ITEC+EATS Battery State of Charge Estimation Student Competition.

For many people who are homeless or members of underserved populations, cell phones are a lifeline; a phone may be their only way to keep in touch with distant friends and relatives, schedule medical appointments and job interviews, and deal with emergencies. Prof. Giri Venkataraman and PhD student Maitreyee Sanjiv Marathe took on the challenge, even organizing a hackathon at the UW-Madison makerspace they dubbed the Solympics, to generate ideas for a solar-powered public charging station. The winning concept was the e-Little Free Library.

MADISON, Wis. – The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation announced that four projects have been selected to receive development funding through the WARF Accelerator Electrification Challenge Grant.

Thomas M. Jahns received the IEEE Medal in Power Engineering in 2022 for contributions to the development of high-efficiency permanent magnet machines and drives.

The Little Free Library in Madison’s Lisa Link Peace Park on State Street has gone solar. A group of UW-Madison students have outfitted the community book depository with a solar-powered battery with ports and cables to charge cellphones and other small electronic devices. The project is part of an effort to improve energy resilience and bring clean energy to underserved communities, especially those experiencing homelessness.

In the 1970s, a small community of pioneering researchers around the world in industry and academia were laying the groundwork for the discipline of solid-state power electronics as we know it today. Near the end of that formative period, the Wisconsin Electric Machines and Power Electronics Consortium (WEMPEC) was founded in 1981 by Profs. Donald W. Novotny and Thomas A. Lipo at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Prof. Robert D. Lorenz joined the embryonic WEMPEC program faculty in 1984, bringing his unique expertise and passion for motor drive controls.

In this digital age, most have dealt with this problem: Your phone dies and you don’t have a phone charger. You ask around and no one else nearby has a phone charger. You can’t make that important phone call.