A successful 2008 CPES Conference and Year 10 NSF Site Visit

The 2008 CPES Conference and Year-10 NSF Summative Site Visit, held April 6-8 at CPES-Virginia Tech, was indeed a success, with 257 participants from 14 countries, representing 67 industrial organizations, 16 academic institutions, and 4 government agencies.

The central focus of this year's event was to celebrate the Center's graduation from the 10-year National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center (NSF ERC) program, and highlight the Center's achievements developed over the last ten years by the CPES multi-disciplinary team, which has been working together to address the intertwined issues of high-frequency power conversion, semiconductor devices, advanced materials, and electro-magneto-thermal-mechanical integration.

The agenda included 20 plenary presentations, with 8 invited presentations and 12 research and program overviews. The Dialogue/Poster Session included 79 poster papers, with additional project posters to summarize the research results generated over the past 10 years. The poster display covered the areas of voltage regulator module, distributed power system, motor drive, integrated power electronics module, integrable material, high-temperature packaging, high-voltage packaging, low-temperature co-fire ceramic, power semiconductor devices, current sensor integration, EMI, electric aircraft power system, high power converter, thermal-mechanical integration, and the new Sustainable Building Initiative.

Following the annual conference and site visit, NSF issued a summative report highlighting the Center's contributions in research, education and industrial collaboration. According to the report, CPES has fully established its global impact and visibility. The Site Visit Team noted that one of the most significant contributions from the Center has been advancing the industry understanding, knowledge base, and practice in innovative power electronics. Examples cited include:

  • - The multi-phase converter concept developed by CPES has become pervasive in industry.
  • - CPES is a leading player in high power density concepts at power levels from at least 100 W to more than 10 kW, as well as distributed dc-dc conversion at voltage levels from 1V to more than 400V. These power and voltage levels represent the energy conversion needs of the computer industry, telecommunications industry, power supply industry, aerospace industry, and the broad base of motor drives at levels below about 10 kW.
  • - CPES is an established world leader for passive integration and combined multi-function integration.
  • - CPES is a leading academic institution for power semiconductor devices.
  • - Original contributions have been developed in passive packaging, silicon and compound power semiconductors, self-sensing and integrated sensing in motors and drives, and magnetic applications in dc-dc converters.

The industrial partnership program was recognized as a definite strength for CPES. The report noted that CPES has developed a capable power electronics workforce, and that industry members have expressed high confidence in the technical and communication skills of CPES graduates they hire. Numerous CPES graduates have achieved high-ranking positions in industry, while others have started their own high-tech companies. Furthermore, CPES has a proven technology transfer strategy to share research results with industry through open dissemination and reliance on non-exclusive licensing.

The Site Visit Report also acknowledged that the Center is a leader in terms of education and educational outreach. The CPES educational and outreach programs have grown consistently both in degree as well as level of innovations.

As part of the post-graduation plan, CPES has introduced the Sustainable Building Initiative (SBI) as a motivating system-level thrust for the future, offering opportunities to explore and flesh out the CPES vision with respect to creative power electronics systems. At CPES-VT, a research lab has been modified into a Living Lab for Future Energy Sustainable Home to incorporate emerging and anticipated future home/small office renewable energy technologies and power management systems.

In summary, the Site Visit Team wrote:
    "The shift in emphasis to embrace energy and environment is a natural progression for CPES. The demand for their research should only increase in the future with greater applications, and the integrated systems approach should make them very competitive in proposal competitions, further providing an incentive for the institutions to stay in CPES. The vision will be expanded to system architecture, power management and efficiency, integration and packaging, modeling and design, etc. This will position CPES for the future."

    The full NSF Summative Site Visit Report is accessible online to industry partners. (Please note: industry member password required.)

    We thank our industry members and sponsors sincerely for providing strong and consistent support through the years, and look forward to deepening our collaboration as we move forward!

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