On Thursday December 1st, Jose A. Cobos, founder of CEI-UPM center, gave an exciting talk about:
“Energy Efficiency through Power Electronics at CEI-UPM”
A Sabbatical at Harvard and UC Berkeley
Power Electronics is a key enabler for Energy efficiency. The talk includes an overview of different techniques to save energy. Power supplies can no longer be designed as independent building blocks, since Energy is required ubiquitously. It is becoming a seamless functionality of the system itself.
In RF amplifiers, power consumption is reduced by appropriate modulation of their supply voltage. In microprocessors and digital systems, dynamic voltage scaling, increased granularity and voltage stacking increase battery life. Rippled based control reduces capacitance requirements and facilitates integration in “Power Supplies on chip” (PwrSoC). In modern Aircrafts, rectifiers & DC-DC converters generating high voltage bus (270Vdc) reduce weight and fuel consumption. Lithium batteries are being extensively used in electric vehicles and domestic and industrial PV panels. The recent improvements in power switches (GaN and SiC) turn the focus again in the design and optimization of high frequency magnetic components. A holistic optimization approach including all these techniques in a top-down approach is needed for maximum energy savings. Finally, the participation of the team CEI@UPM in the “Little Box Challenge” (Google and IEEE-PELS) will be discussed.
The talk finished with some reflections about professional trajectories and mobility from the speaker’s perspective, belonging to a Spanish R&D Center with a strong Industrial Program (CEI-UPM), on sabbatical this year at Harvard (RCC Fellow) and UC Berkeley (Fulbright).
José A. Cobos is a Full Professor at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Chair of the “Industrial Council @ CEI”. He lectures Electronics with special focus on Fundamentals, Analog, and Power Electronics, for Undergraduate, Master and Doctoral students.
His contributions are focused in the field of power supply systems for telecom, aerospace, industrial, automotive and medical applications. His research interests include energy efficiency in digital systems and RF amplifiers, magnetic components, piezoelectric transformers, transcutaneous energy transfer and dynamic power management. He also works in the generation of EM fields for water supercooling and biomedical effects. He advised over 40 Master Thesis and 14 Doctoral dissertations, published over 50 journal papers and over 300 technical papers (h=40, >6000 citations) and holds 8 patents. He conducted professional seminars and tutorials in USA, UK, Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Syria, Mexico and Macedonia.
In 2006, he launched the “Centro de Electrónica Industrial, CEI-UPM”, a University research center leading a strong industrial program in power electronics and digital systems. In 2016 he launched the “Industrial Council @ CEI” to coordinate Education & Research with Industry, and provide scholarships to CEI students, sponsored by Airbus S&D – CRISA, Thales Alenia Space, Bosch, Premo, Huawei, Indra, Ansys, Viesca, Airbus and Apex. He is RCC Fellow at Harvard University and recipient of a Fulbright grant to work on Energy Efficiency, at UC Berkeley.
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