Giri Venkataramanan
Position: Associate Professor (ECE)
Office: 2559C Engineering Hall, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Email: giri@engr.wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 262-4479
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Giri Venkataramanan is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from the Government College of Technology, Coimbatore, India, in 1986, the M.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, in 1987, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1992. Prior to his position in Madison, Giri taught Electrical Engineering at Montana State University in Bozeman. During his tenure in Montana, he designed and built a power electronics and electrical machines laboratory and also co-directed a student solar car team , which was among the top performing challengers during Sunrayce'95.
In 1999 he returned to UW-Madison to continue teaching and research activities in the field of power electronics. He serves as an Associate Director of Wiscosnin Electrical Machines and Power Electronics Consortium. In this position, he conducts research in the area of electronic power conversion in various applications with a primary motivation to increase efficiency of energy generation, transport, conversion and utilization systems.
During his recent sabbatical leave ('05-'06), he learned and built small scale wind turbines in Scotland, University of California-Berkeley, Federal University of Minas Gerais-Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey (Article on Giri's sabbatical in UW-Madison's Perspective). Upon returning to campus, he offered a pilot wind turbine construction course for freshmen engineering students to promote renewable energy, and power conversion field into the curriculum.
His previous work under CPES was focused on modular packaging of power converters and study of electric bicycles as an educational vehicle. His research interests are in the areas of microgrids, distributed generation, renewable energy systems, matrix and multilevel power converters, ac power flow control, and human scale projects in engineering education. His recent work under CPES is focused on applications of microgrids for residential applications in the future sustainable buildings initiative.