Principal Investigator
Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, Associate Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
PhD 2012, Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.Eng 2007, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
B.S 2005, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
B.S 2005, Physics, MIT
Phone: (217) 244-0181, E-mail: pilawa@illinois.edu
Address: 4042 Electrical and Computer Engineering Building, 306 North Wright Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
Robert Pilawa-Podgurski is currently an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and is affiliated with the Power and Energy Systems group. He performs research in the area of power electronics. His research interests include renewable energy applications, electric vehicles, energy harvesting, CMOS power management, high density and high efficiency power converters, and advanced control of power converters. Dr. Pilawa-Podgurski received the Chorafas Award for outstanding MIT EECS Master’s thesis, the Google Faculty Research Award in 2013, and the 2014 Richard M. Bass Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, given annually to one individual for outstanding contributions to the field of power electronics before the age of 35. In 2015, he received the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the UIUC Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2016, the UIUC Campus Distinguished Promotion Award in 2017, and the UIUC ECE Ronald W. Pratt Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award in 2017. Since 2014, he serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, and for IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics. He is co-author of eight IEEE prize papers.
Graduate Students
Pourya Assem
Pourya received his BS degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2012 , and is currently pursuing his MS degree. His research focus is on hybrid switched-capacitor power converters in advanced CMOS processes, and digital control techniques for power conversion.
Maggie Blackwell
Maggie received her BS degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Mathematics from Texas A&M University, College Station, TX in 2017. She is currently pursuing her MS degree in Electrical Engineering, with a focus on multi-level power converters for various applications, including solar photovoltaics and data center power delivery.
Nathan Brooks
Nathan received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana in 2016. He is currently pursuing his MS degree in Electrical Engineering. His research focus is twice-line frequency buffering and active power factor correction in ac-dc and dc-ac converters.
Christopher Barth
Chris received his BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2012 and 2014, respectively. For his BS and MS work, he performed research in solar photovoltaics and advanced digital control techniques for maximum power point tracking. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree, with a focus on high power density inverter, motor drives, and thermal management of power electronic systems.
Enver Candan
Enver received dual BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Control Engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey in 2012. He received is MS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign as a Fulbright Scholar in 2014. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree, and is performing research in high efficiency data center power delivery, and advanced digital control techniques of power converters.
Derek Chou
Derek received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with a minor in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley in 2015. He is currently pursuing his MS degree in Electrical Engineering, with a focus on thermal management of 3D integrated power electronics.
Samantha Coday
Sam received her BS in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas in 2017. She is currently pursuing her MS in Electrical Engineering. Her research area is capacitor based power converters.
Zitao Liao
Zitao received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2015. He is currently pursuing his MS degree in Electrical Engineering, with a focus on highly efficient multi-level dc-dc step-up power converters using GaN transistors.
Wen-Chuen Joseph Liu
Joseph received his BS and MSc degrees in Electrical Engineering from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan, Taiwan, in 2010 and 2013 respectively. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering. His research area is in integrated CMOS power management and capacitor based power converters.
Pei Han Ng
Pei received her BS degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2016. She is currently pursuing her MS degree in Electrical Engineering with a focus on power management IC.
Nathan Pallo
After completing his BSEE from MIT in 2011, Nathan remained in the Boston area to work in the innovation economy. After 5 years in industry – with work ranging from designing advanced wireless power systems for medical, automotive and consumer applications at WiTricity Corporation, to research and development on measurement and control systems in harsh environments at Loci Controls – Nathan joined Pilawa Group at ECE Illinois in 2016 for graduate studies. Current research includes extreme performance power converters, as well as their real-time emulation.
Andrew Stillwell
Andrew received dual BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering from University of Missouri, Columbia, MO in 2005. He spent six years at National Instruments before arriving at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign to pursue his MS degree in Electrical Engineering, which he received in 2015 after performing research in resonant switched-capacitor based power conversion for CPU power delivery. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Electrical Engineering, with a focus on isolated multi-level converters and hybrid switched-capacitor converters for high voltage generation.
Zichao Ye
Zichao received his BS degree and MS degree in Electrical Engineering, all from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, in 2014 and 2016 respectively. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering. His research interest is on flying capacitor multi-level power converters with extreme power densities, with a focus on integrated gate drivers and single-stage buck PFC.
Yizhe Zhang
Yizhe received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2015. He is currently pursuing his MS degree in Electrical Engineering, with a focus on differential power processing systems for high efficiency data center power delivery.
Undergraduate Students and Laboratory Assistants
Oscar Azofeifa Castillo
Oscar received his BS in Mechatronics Engineering at Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (Costa Rican Institute of Technology) in 2015. He is currently enrolled in the NPRE department’s Master of Engineering in Energy Systems: Primary Field in Electrical Energy Conversion, Transmission and Distribution. Special interest in Renewables Integration into the Electrical Grid. Oscar is helping with evaluation of magnetic components as a volunteer laboratory assistant.
Adwaita Dani
Adwaita Dani is a Senior studying Electrical Engineering. He has experience in consumer electronics, construction management and business consulting. He currently works on differential power processing for DC systems.
Jihyun Lee
Jihyun is a freshman studying electrical engineering. She is working on GaN assembly and integration.
Anika Manzo
Anika is currently a junior in Electrical Engineering looking to receive a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Illinois in the spring of 2018. She is primarily interested in power electronics and energy systems, and is performing research in the area of embedded sensing and control for distributed grid analytics.
Michelle Rentauskas
Michelle Rentauskas is a freshman currently pursuing a BS in Electrical Engineering. Her research interests include increasing efficiency of photovoltaic power conversion and other forms of renewable energy, differential power processing systems, and thermal management of power converters. Michelle currently plans to attend graduate school and hopes to pursue a career in academia in the future.
Eric Saathoff
Erik is currently pursuing his BS degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign with plans to begin graduate studies in 2018. His research focus is on implementation of GaN transistors in resonant converters for high power density.
Sunyu Wang
Sunyu Wang is a sophomore in the department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. He is interested in electric vehicles and power electronics. He is currently working on embedded control for power applications.
Alumni
Post-Doc Researchers
Dr. Tomas Modeer (2016-2017)
PhD Research
Yutian Lei, PhD 2017 – now at Tesla
Shibin Qin, PhD 2017 – now at Apple
Master’s Research
Derek Heeger, MS 2016 – now at Sandia National Laboratories
Felix Hsiao, MS 2016 – now at Amazon Lab126
Joshua Garcia-Sheridan, MS studies – now at Virginia Tech PhD program in Engineering Education
Aaron Ho, MS 2015 – now at United States Patent and Trademark Office
Ben Macy, MS 2015 – now at Microsoft
Yuqi Li, MS 2015 – now at Texas Instrumets
Roy Bell, MS 2014 – now at University of Minnesota PhD program
Josiah McClurg, MS 2014 – now at University of Iowa PhD program
Marcel Schuck, MS 2013 – now at ETH PhD program
Ryan May, MS 2013 – now at Texas Instruments
Visiting Researchers
Juan Colmenares, PhD exchange 2016 from KTH – Royal Institute of Technology
Undergraduate Thesis Research
Intae Moon, BS 2016 – now at MIT PhD program
Thomas Navidi, BS 2016 – now at Stanford PhD program
Benedict Foo, BS 2015 – now at Dartmouth College PhD program
Rodrigo Serna, BS 2014 – now at Citibank Investments
Jingyi Ma, BS 2014 – now at University of Southern California MS program
Yujia Zhang, BS 2014 – now at Stanford MS program
Felix Hsiao, BS 2014 – now at UIUC MS program
Ziming Chen, BS 2013
Sutchaya Lertburapa, BS 2013 – now at Foxconn
Sartaj Grewal, BS 2013 – now at UIUC MS program
Christopher Barth, BS 2012 – now at UIUC PhD program
Undergraduate Research
Won Ho Chung, undergraduate research (2016-2017)
Carl Haken, undergraduate research (2015-2016) – now at SpaceX
Mark Hirsbrunner, undergraduate research (2014-15)
Corinne Cannavale, undergraduate research (2013-15)
Brady Salz, undergraduate research (2014) – now at UIUC MS program
Emma He, undergraduate research (2014)
Chenyang Xu, undergraduate research (2013) – now at UC Berkeley MS program
Andrew Morrison, undergraduate research (2013-2014) – now at ETH MS program
Ruichen Zhao, undergraduate research (2013) – now at UNSW PhD program
Jeff Wheeler (2012-2013) now at Stanford MS program
Charles Wu (2012-2013) – now at MISO Energy