Pierre Thollot Receives 21st Wm. E. Newell Award
Three Additional New Awards Presented at PESC® `97
The 1997 William E. Newell Power Electronics Award, which has been presented annually since 1977 for outstanding achievement in power electronics, was presented this year to Pierre A. Thollot at the annual awards luncheon of the 1997 Power Electronics Specialists Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Pierre A. Thollot
Thollot (M'75-SM'86-F'94) received his BSEE degree from The City College of New York in 1962. He joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where in 1968 he became head of the Brayton Controls and Electrical Components Section responsible for power generation and control subsystems. While with NASA, he was appointed Chief of a newly-formed Power Electronics Branch within the Spacecraft Technology Division in 1971, and later, Deputy Project Manager, Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Project Office.
In 1981 he left NASA to join Sundstrand Corporation as Research Engineering Manager responsible for aerospace advanced prototype high-power electronic processing, management and distribution projects. Subsequently, his responsibilities as Director of the Electrical Research organization included direction of three technical departments. Prior to his retirement in 1996 he held the position of Chief Research Engineer at Sundstrand. Not willing to fully retire, Pierre and his wife Jenny moved to Denver, to be closer to several of their children/grandchildren, where he has started a consulting business.
Thollot's career includes 30 years of volunteer service serving on numerous industry and government committees and active participation in various professional organizations, including serving on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and as President of the Power Electronics Society. In 1994 he was made a Fellow of the IEEE. With other coinventors, his work has lead to seven U. S. Patents, and he is author of over a dozen technical reports. Thollot was founder and first chairman of the International Council on Power Electronic Cooperation, and Chief Editor of the first (1993) "IEEE Technology Update Series" of books titled Power Electronics Technology and Applications.
The William E. Newell Power Electronics Award is presented by the Power Electronics Society and is dedicated to the memory of Dr. William E. Newell of the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The awardee has been judged to be outstanding in the multidisciplinary field of power electronics which crosses the technical boundaries of a number of Societies of the IEEE. The recipient receives a suitably inscribed plaque and a cash award of $1,750.
Achievements by which an individual is judged to have made outstanding contributions encompass a broad range of activities and include teaching, innovative research, consulting endeavors, professional seminars, major project or program management, and the general communication and advocacy of power electronics technology to the technical community as a whole. The technical disciplines which encompass the field of power electronics include the analysis, design, development, simulation and application of electronic devices, magnetics, controls and power circuits for inverters, converters and motor drives ranging in power level from fractions of a watt to megawatts.
New PELS Awards for 1997
In addition to the Newell Award, three new awards authorized by the PELS Administrative Committee were made at the 1997 Power Electronics Specialists Conference awards luncheon. They are the Distinguished Service Award, the Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award, and the PELS Transactions Prize Paper Awards.
Distinguished Service Award
Harry A. Owen, Jr.
The 1997 Distinguished Service Award went to Harry A. Owen, Jr. (S'46-A'49-SM'64-LSM'84-LF'93). He has been actively involved in the IEEE Power Electronics Society and its predecessor, the IEEE Power Electronics Council. He has served on a variety of Society committees, including the Administrative Committee, and has chaired the Awards and Publications Committees. He has edited the Society Newsletter since its first issue in 1989.
Owen received the B.E.E. ('48) and M.S.E. ('52) degrees from the University of Florida and the Ph.D. degree ('63) from North Carolina State University. During World War II he served in the U. S. Navy teaching radar electronics, and helped write an instruction manual, Fundamentals of Radar. From 1948 to 1951 he was Instructor and Assistant in Research in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Florida. From 1951 to 1986 he taught and did research in the Electrical Engineering Department at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, serving as Chairman of the Department from 1968 to 1974. Retiring in 1986, he is now Professor Emeritus.
In 1958 he received a National Science Foundation Science Faculty Fellowship for graduate study at North Carolina State University. From 1967 to 1968 he held a NASA Senior Postdoctoral Research Associateship at Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland. He was an ESA Senior Research Fellow from 1975 to 1976 at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in The Netherlands. He is the author of more than 50 technical papers in communication systems, power electronics and magnetics.
The Distinguished Service Award is to honor long and distinguished service to the welfare of the Power Electronics Society at an exceptional level of dedication and achievement. The prize consists of a cash award of $1,200 and an engraved plaque. All members of the Power Electronics Society are eligible. The basis for judging candidates for the award includes outstanding contributions over a substantial time period encompassing creative and invigorating leadership of the Society, exceptional administrative and managerial accomplishments on behalf of the Society, identification of new technologies within the scope of the Society and nurturing activities to support these emerging technologies, initiation of innovative programs to encourage wider participation in the full spectrum of Society activities, and the general communication and advocacy of power electronics technology to the technical community as a whole.
Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award
Vlatko Vlatkovic
The 1997 Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award was made to Vlatko Vlatkovic (S'88-M'94). Vlatkovic received his B.S. degree from the University of Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, in 1987, 1991, and 1994 respectively, all in electrical engineering. From 1987 to 1989 he was employed as a Research and Teaching Associate in the Institute for Power and Electronics at the University of Novi Sad, where he worked on projects involving control of industrial machines and radio data systems, and assisted in teaching semiconductor physics and microprocessor architecture.
In 1994 he joined the research staff of the General Electric Corporate R&D Center. His research interests include high-power multiphase and resonant converters, converter modeling and control, EMI design for power converters, microprocessor control of multiphase converters, medical imaging, and x-ray generation. He has published over fifteen technical papers, holds four US patents with four pending, and has led over twenty research and development projects. Dr. Vlatkovic is a member of Phi Kappa Phi and Eta Kappa Nu.
The Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award is to recognize outstanding achievement in the field of power electronics by an engineer of less than 35 years of age. The prize consists of a cash award of $500, a certificate, and reimbursement for transportation expenses up to $500 to attend the annual PELS Awards Banquet. All IEEE members of any grade, active in the field of power electronics and less than 35 years of age as of January 1 of the year of the award, are eligible. The basis for judging candidates for the award includes outstanding contributions in the multidisciplinary field of power electronics. Outstanding contributions encompass a broad range of activities including research, innovative product design, teaching and project management. The technical disciplines which encompass the field of power electronics include the analysis, design, development, simulation and application of electronic devices, magnetics, controls and power circuits for inverters, converters and motor drives ranging in power level from fractions of a watt to megawatts.
Transactions Prize Paper Awards
The winners of the Prize Paper Awards aree selected by a process of nomination and selection by the Editor and Associate Editors of the PELS Transactions. Each Associate Editor nominates one paper from the previous year's Transactions, and the three winning papers are selected through a priority-ranking ballot procedure. An award of $300 is made for each of the three papers which is to be divided among the coauthors when a paper has more than a single author. The prize-winning papers from the 1996 Transactions on Power Electronics are:
"Input Filter Design for Multiple-Module DC Power Systems"
The authors are Martin Florez-Lizarraga, Product Development Engineer at International Power Systems, a division of C&D Corporation; and Arthur F. Witulski, Associate Professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
"Nonlinear-Carrier Control for High-Power-Factor Boost Rectifier"
The authors are Dragan Maksimovic (M'89), Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Yungtaek Jang (S'92-M'95), Research Engineer at Advanced Energy Industries Inc. in Fort Collins, CO, USA; and Robert W. Erickson (S'80-M'82), Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
"A Procedure for Designing EMI Filters for AC Line Application"
The authors are Fu-Yuan Shih , Ph.D. student at National Taiwan University, Dan Y. Chen (S'72-M'75-SM'83), Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Yan-Pei Wu, Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University; Yie-Tone Chen (S'91-M'94), Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. National Yunlin Institute of Technology, Taiwan.
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