Dr. J. Daan van
Wyk
1995 William E. Newell Power
Electronics Award Recipient
Dr. J. Daan van Wyk of Rand Afrikaans University, South Africa, has been honored by being named the recipient of the 1995 William E. Newell Power Electronics Award. The announcement and presentation of the award was made at the awards luncheon June 22 at the 1995 Power Electronics Specialists Conference held at the Swissôtel in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. The award, which consists of a plaque and an honorarium of $1,750, is made by the IEEE Power Electronics Society to an individual who has been judged to be outstanding in the multidisciplinary field of power electronics, which crosses the technical boundaries of numerous IEEE Societies.Daan Van Wyk was born in Fauresmith, South Africa, in 1939. He received the M.Sc.Eng. degree from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in 1966, and the Degree of Doctor of Technical Science (cum laude) from the University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands, in 1969. He was elected an IEEE Fellow in 1990 with the citation "For contributions to the technology of power electronic converters and associated equipment."
Between 1961 and 1971 he worked with the S.A. Iron and Steel Corporation, the University of Pretoria, and was on the technical and scientific staff of the University of Eindhoven. From 1971 to the present he as been a full Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, holding a chair in Power Electronics until 1992. An experimentalist by inclination, he has been involved in many development projects. Over the past twenty years his work has been concerned with electrical drives, power electronic devices and converters, industrial electronics and control, electrical power quality, and electrical manufacturing and materials. He has also been involved in extensive industrial work and is at present Programme Director of the Industrial Electronics Technology Research Group in the Faculty of Engineering.
From 1981 to 1988 he served as Dean of Engineering and from 1993 to June, 1995, as Vice-Rector of the University. From 1989 to 1991 he also served as part of the management team of the Foundation for Research Development (FRD) in Pretoria as Executive Director responsible for programmes in Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Engineering and Technology. In 1992 he served as Counsel to the FRD-President. Since 1976 he has annually been appointed visiting professor in the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives of the University of Technology, Aachen, Germany. Since 1989 he has been a member of the Graduate Faculty and an Adjunct Professor at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, U.S.A.
Dr. Van Wyk is also a Fellow of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers, a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering and a member of the Royal Dutch Institute of Engineers, and has been author or coauthor of more than 250 publications. He has been corecipient of nine IEEE prize paper awards for some of this work and is active in the IEEE Power Electronics Society as well as in the IEEE Industry Applications Society.
Source: Newsletter of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, July 1995 pgs. 1, 10.