Warwick University
Warwick is one of the UK’s leading universities, with an acknowledged reputation for excellence in research and teaching, for innovation, and for links with business and industry.
The PEATER group, based in the School of Engineering, is headed by Professor Philip Mawby. PEATER is a world-class centre for research into power electronics, power semiconductor devices and applications in power systems and power conversion.
PEATER carries out work in electrical energy conversion, from the very small power (mW) levels to very high power levels (MW). This technology centres on the developments in semiconductor switching devices. The developments in MOSFET and IGBT technologies have paved the way for new applications such as Hybrid vehicles, Electric Aircraft, Electric Ship propulsion, Wind Turbines as well as the revolution in mobile phone and computing devices, where energy management is critical to all these applications.
The area of efficient electrical energy conversion has become critical in the development in Energy Systems. Renewable energy sources will be hooked into electrical energy networks using power electronics and power transmission and distribution will become more reliant on power electronics to efficiently control and regulate electrical energy in an already congested electrical network. All forms of transport are becoming dependant on power electronics to provide more sustainable vehicles.
Hui Huang graduated with the first class honour of Master Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from University of Leicester in SEP 2008. His PhD is concerning the development of new design concepts and techniques with high reliability and low life cycle cost for the integration in renewable generation.He is developing a physical model for power converters which can be used for converter design or condition monitoring of power converter. Power cycling test will be used to prove the validity of this model.
Professor Phil Mawby is Professor of Power Electronics at the University of Warwick for two years, prior to which he spent 19 years at the University of Wales Swansea. His main areas of expertise are in semiconductor device technology for power devices, in particular as applied to power switching devices. He is one of the UK’s leading authorise on Silicon Carbide power device technology and applications. He also has an internationally recognised activity in the modelling of power devices, particularly in the area of compact modelling and fast systems modelling. He now heads a team of 5 academic staff and 12 researchers. He is the author of over 150 journal and international conference papers, a fellow of the IET and a fellow of the Institute of Physics as well as an SMIEEE. The area of energy research has recently been strategically selected as a key area of multidisciplinary strength at the University and the West midlands. Under the Chancellor’s (Gordon Brown) Science City Initiative Warwick and Birmingham are receiving a strategic investment from the regional development agency for major capital and infrastructure of approximately £20m. In 2005 he led a delegation from the Welsh Energy Research Centre to China, funded under the EPSRC INTELLECT scheme. This proposal builds on several of the contacts established through that very successful project. He is currently running 7 research projects in the area of power electronics in the automotive, aerospace, semiconductor materials and power electronics reliability areas.
Dr. Shaoyong Yang received B. Eng and M.Eng degrees in Electrical Engineering from Shandong University in 1996 and China Electric Power Research Institute in 1999 respectively. He received PhD in power electronics at University of Birmingham in 2005. He joined University of Warwick in 2007. Dr. Yang is a recipient of China Science and Technology Advancement Prize (silver), 2003.