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Pre-Conference Story

APEC '99 Returns to Dallas

by Larry Gilbert, APEC Publicity Chair
Photographs by Larry Gilbert

While thousands of Americans watched professional football games or Mark McGwire set yet another record with his 65th home run, 32 members of the APEC '99 Program Committee met at the conference hotel site on Sunday 20th September to assist Program Chair Bob White with our annual challenge of creating the Conference Program. In preparation for this final "cut," 226 volunteers signed up to perform a peer review of the 379 digests received for next year's conference. At this point we are truly being challenged. Although we are including a record number of digests in the APEC '99 program, almost 50% of the submitted papers failed to be accepted. The reviewers felt that several of these submissions should be offered to the PESC Conference while others received very low scores. We are planning to share the reviewer's comments with the authors of those rejected papers.

The 14th annual Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC '99) will be held March 14-18, 1999 at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Dallas, Texas. The Conference is sponsored by the IEEE Power Electronics and Industry Applications and the Power Sources Manufacturers Associations.

In keeping with the APEC mission to serve the educational needs of practicing professionals in the power electronics industry, the Program Committee has formulated a dynamite program to provide "practical" information on the latest components and circuits, design oriented analysis techniques, and current trends in the design and manufacture of power electronic products and systems.

A record number of abstracts (379) were received from 36 different Nations (another record). Processing and scoring these abstracts was a difficult task, with the technical program including a record 191 technical papers at APEC '99. These presentations will be arranged into 26 sessions that have been arranged into 5 parallel tracks.

Including papers from 27 Nations (another record) APEC '99 continues to maintain it's worldwide recognition as the foremost conference to present technical papers addressing all aspects of "applied" power electronics. Although a large number of abstracts were received from Asian Nations, we also received proposals from as far away as Australia and New Zealand. Representing almost 25% of our technical session papers, authors from China, Japan and Korea are demonstrating that Asian industry and academia are very active in practical technology advancements as we approach the new millennium.

With the media focus on political unrest around the world, it is refreshing to see proposals from Israel and Palestine, as well as Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia. Politics will not interfere with our open door policy to consider all potential authors/speakers.

APEC '99 will include 26 technical sessions, 15 outstanding professional education seminars, 3 audience participation rap sessions, twelve vendor application seminars, the 13th annual "micromouse" competition, and a "sold out" exhibition hall containing 119 booths, another APEC record.

The Professional Education Seminars will start on Sunday morning with five parallel tracks that will include in-depth information on: An introduction to power electronics for the non-specialist; power converter design using power semiconductors; using computer aided algebra for power supply analysis and design; electronic environments; avoiding the EMI "accident"-how to paper train your power supply; passive lossless snubbers for high frequency PWM converters; high efficiency rectification techniques for both low and high output voltage applications; cross regulation mechanisms in multiple-output forward and flyback converters; the ABC's of planar magnetics design; how to select and apply an adjustable speed AC drive; DSP control of advanced motor drives; physical understanding of vector-control for induction motor drives; practical overview of MOSFET gate drives techniques in high speed switch mode applications; patents, prior art searching, and intellectual property for power electronics engineers; and power electronic packaging.

The plenary session will include five outstanding presentations starting with: the evolution of power electronics. This will be followed by: power conversion, the prosperity machine-Part II--the semiconductor roadmap; STATPEP-current status of power electronic packaging; SSI--building compliant elements for servers (the Intel Initiative); AC drives:Y2K and beyond.

This years audience participation rap sessions will focus on: profit margins in power (a subject close to every suppliers heart); where is the technology going? To APEC--are we serving the needs of the community. I expect to see some lively debate in each of these sessions.

The Exhibit Hall will contain the latest product offerings from power electronic components to power supplies and DC/DC converters.

The Conference's social events will include a reception with the exhibitors with wine, beer, soft drinks, and hors d'oeuvres Monday evening and light refreshments in the Exhibit Hall on Tuesday evening. The highlight of our social program will be a banquet.

For additional conference or exhibition information, please contact APEC '99 @ 202-973-8664, FAX 202-331-0111 or click on our WEB site www.APEC-conf.org.

See you in Dallas.

PS: We are working on having a "special" guest/speaker at the plenary session--stay tuned.

Larry Gilbert, APEC Publicity Chair