Header Search Widget
Berkeley Power and Energy Center

Powering Tomorrow's Industry with Today's Research and Education

Home » News

News

Rod Bayliss III Wins Outstanding Grad Student Instructor Award!

Posted on
by Sarah Douglas
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 […]

BPEC Wins Four Best Presentation Awards at IEEE APEC 2025

Posted on
by Sarah Douglas
Four researchers from the Berkeley Power and Energy Center (BPEC) received awards for outstanding oral and poster presentations at the 40th IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC 2025), the flagship conference in power electronics. Syed Tahmid Mahbub, a second-year EE PhD student advised by Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, received a Best Presentation Award for his oral […]

BPEC Students Win First Best Place Demo Award at IEEE!

Posted on
by Sarah Douglas
Graduate students Logan Horowitz, S. Tahmid Mahbub, Jiarui Zou, and Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski have received a First Best Place Demo Award at the recent 2024 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress & Expo. Their innovative thermal test vehicle design provides a dynamic platform which simulates the heat generation of high-performance GPUs and CPUs, allowing engineers to evaluate […]

BPEC Director Robert Pilawa-Podgurski Elevated to IEEE Fellow

Posted on
by Sarah Douglas
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 […]

Welcome to BPEC – Skycore Semiconductors

Posted on
by Sarah Douglas
Skycore Semiconductors brings cutting-edge expertise in switched-capacitor power conversion integrated circuits (ICs). Their innovative technology enables advanced power converter topologies that redefine efficiency, size, and cost-effectiveness. From AI servers and power modules to industrial and consumer applications, Skycore’s solutions are driving improvements across a wide range of sectors. We look forward to working together!

BPEC graduate students Rahul Iyer and Tahmid Mahbub awarded IEEE INTELEC-2024 Best Paper Award

Posted on
by Sarah Douglas
The IEEE International Communications Energy Conference (INTELEC) 2024 is a leading forum dedicated to the technical and informational exchange on energy systems for communications, covering areas such as power conversion, distribution, energy storage, renewable generation, and transportation electrification. EECS graduate students Rahul Iyer and Tahmid Mahbub have received the prestigious IEEE INTELEC-2024 Best Paper Award […]

Our very own Yicheng Zhu receives Teaching Effectiveness Award!

Posted on
by Sarah Douglas
EECS grads Vivek Bharadwaj and Yicheng Zhu have received Teaching Effectiveness Awards 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 […]

Francesca Giardine and Kelly Fernandez win Best Paper Award at ECCE – Europe

Posted on
by Sarah Douglas
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 […]

BPEC attends APEC

Posted on
by Berkeley Engineering
BPEC researchers traveled to Long Beach, CA to the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) to showcase our new center and research projects. Thank you to everyone who stopped by for excellent technical discussions.

Kelly Fernandez and Maggie Blackwell Graduate

Posted on
by Berkeley Engineering
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!

EECS Grads win another IEEE COMPEL Best Paper Award

Posted on
by Berkeley Engineering
EECS graduate students Yicheng Zhu and Jiarui Zou, and post-docs Ting Ge and Nathan Ellis have won the 2023 IEEE Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL) Best Paper Award. Their paper, “A 48-V-to-1-V Switching Bus Converter for Ultra-High-Current Applications,” demonstrated a new dc-dc power converter topology and control technique for data center power delivery […]

Two graduate students receive technical awards at IEEE APEC

Posted on
by Berkeley Engineering
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 […]

EECS Grads win IEEE COMPEL Best Paper Award

Posted on
by Berkeley Engineering
Graduate students Nathan Brooks, Samantha Coday, Maggie Blackwell, Rose Abramson, and post-doc Nathan Ellis have won the IEEE COMPEL Best Paper Award for their paper, “Operation of Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converters At and Above Resonance.” The paper was presented at the 23rd IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL), which took place […]

Yicheng Zhu wins NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship

Posted on
by Berkeley Engineering
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 […]

EECS graduate students turn e-waste into art

Posted on
by Berkeley Engineering
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. […]

Rod Bayliss and Vivek Nair win 2022 Hertz Fellowships

Posted on
by Berkeley Engineering
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 […]

Amanda Jackson, Samantha Coday, Kelly Fernandez, and Rose Abramson win IEEE APEC best presentation awards

Posted on
by Berkeley Engineering
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 […]