Energy Internet and Critical Power Electronics Technology

Prof. Alex Q. Huang

FREEDM

Dr. Alex Huang received his B.Sc. degree from Zhejiang University, China in 1983 and his M.Sc. degree from Chengdu Institute of Radio Engineering, China in 1986, both in electrical engineering. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, UK in 1992. From 1994 to 2004, he was a founding member and a professor of Center for Power Electronics System (an NSF ERC) at Virginia Tech. Since 2004, he has been a professor of electrical engineering at North Carolina State University and he is currently the Progress Energy Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He established the NSF FREEDM Systems ERC in 2008. As part of the FREEDM System concept, he developed the original concept of Energy Internet with the Solid State Transformer serving as an Energy Router. Today, FREEDM Systems ERC is one of the most successful ERCs in the USA with support from many companies. Dr. Huang is also the lead PI and visionary leader behind NCSU’s recent success in establishing the next generation Wide bandgap power electronics manufacturing innovation institute.

Dr. Huang’s research areas are power semiconductor devices, power management integrated circuits, power electronics and its emerging applications such as those in future electric power delivery and management systems. A very active and productive research leader, Dr. Huang has mentored and graduated more than 70 Ph.D. and master students and has generated more than $200m external R&D fundings in the last 20 years. Dr. Huang has published more than 400 papers in journals and conference proceedings, and holds 20 US patents. Dr. Huang is the inventor and developer of the ETO thyristor technology. Dr. Huang is a fellow of IEEE and the recipient of the prestigious 2003 R&D 100 award and 2011 MIT Technology Magazine awards.