Pilawa Research Group paper wins 1st place 2020 PELS Transactions Prize Paper Award

Robert Pilawa-Podgurski

Researchers from the Pilawa Research Group, including EECS alumnus Nathan Pallo (Ph.D. ’21), EECS Associate Prof.  Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, and former postdoc Tomas Modeer, have won one of four 1st place 2020 IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) Transactions Prize Paper Awards.   Their paper, which was co-authored by Pilawa-Podgurski’s UIUC graduate students, Tom Foulkes and Chris Barth,  is titled “Design of a GaN-Based Interleaved Nine-Level Flying Capacitor Multilevel Inverter for Electric Aircraft Applications.” This award is considered the top publication award in the field of power electronics, and is known for it’s rigorous evaluation process, which recognizes “originality; contribution to the field; extent to which the paper is supported by analysis and experimental evidence; and quality of presentation, including the effective use of illustrations.”  The winners of the 2020 award were selected from a pool of 1,148 papers.