Welcome to SPEC

PVSG_2019

  • Power Electronics is the enabling technology for an electrified world, converting electric energy from one form to the other, from a few watts to 100s MW
  • SPEC at UT Austin is a center of excellence with strong industry guidance
    • Educate and train world class students
    • Perform and publish world-class research
    • Design, build, and test first-of-a-kind devices and systems
    • World class facility accessible by industry
    • Technology transfer to industry ‒ Spinout companies
    • Provide advice to the government
    • Educating the public through demonstration and pilot project
  • Industry supports SPEC typically in the following three way
    • Sponsor a SPEC fellowship (typically $70k/per year)
    • Sponsor a contract research with defined milestones and budget
    • Joint proposal to government (NSF, DOE, Arpa-E etc.)
APEC-2024-Reward-Mafu

APEC Outstanding Presentation Award

Feb. 2024: Congratulations to SPEC student Mafu Zhang for winning the Outstanding Presentation Award at APEC 2024 for the paper entitled "New Single-Stage Single-Phase Isolated Bidirectional AC-DC PFC Converter".

APEC-2024-Reward-Zou

APEC Outstanding Presentation Award

Feb. 2024: Congratulations to SPEC student Huanghaohe Zou for winning the Outstanding Presentation Award at APEC 2024 for the paper entitled "Simplified Fixed Frequency Phase Shift Modulation for a Novel Single-Stage Single Phase Series-Resonant AC-DC Converter".

SPEC at APEC 2024

IEEE APEC 2024

February 2024: Several researchers from the Semiconductor Power Electronics Center (SPEC) attended the 2024 IEEE APEC Conference in Long Beach, California from 02/25/2024 to 02/29/2024. Three papers from Dr. Huang’s group were presented at this conference.

John Deere

SPEC part of the team selected by DOE working with John Deere to electrify agriculture vehicles

Feb 2024: SPEC experts are working with John Deere to develop technologies to electrify agriculture vehicles like tractors. A new project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy aims to develop a mobile and rapid charging mechanism for remotely located electric vehicles used in farming and construction operations. A trio of UT battery experts are part of the $2.25 million project led by John Deere: Prof. Alex Huang, SPEC director and expert in power electronics; Prof. Venkat Subramanian, expert in battery management systems; and Prof. Hao Zhu, expert in electric power systems.

xixi_defence

SPEC Student XiXi Luo's Defense

Dec. 2023: SPEC congratulates XiXi Luo for successfully defending her Ph.D. Her thesis title is "Research and Development of High Voltage SiC Bipolar Junction Transistor". Her committee members include Alex Huang, Xiuling Li, Sanjay Banerjee, Ananth Dodabalapur, and Anant Agarwal.

SPEC ECCE2023

IEEE ECCE 2023

Nov 2023: Professor Alex Huang and several researchers from the Semiconductor Power Electronics Center (SPEC) attended the 2023 IEEE ECCE Conference in Nashville, TN from 10/29/2023 to 11/02/2023. Sixteen papers from Dr. Huang’s group were presented at this conference.

SPEC Contact Info

Location:

Main Campus: EER 7.874, 2501 Speedway, Austin, TX 78712

Pickle Research Campus: EME Building 133, 10500 Exploration Way, Austin, TX 78758

Email:

spec@utexas.edu

Website:

http://spec.ece.utexas.edu