Our graduate students Weiqian Cai, Soham Dutta, Debjyoti Chatterjee, Pranav Chandran, and Kamakshi Tatkare presented their works at IEEE Workshop on Modeling and Control of Power Electronics (COMPEL) 2025 in Knoxville, TN on June 20-24.
Weiqian made a poster on capacity-constrained PV grid-forming control. Debjyoti's presentation was about large-signal transient stability on grid-forming inverter. Pranav presented his work on an innovative wave energy MPPT control approach. Soham proposed a soft-startup scheme for series-connected converters. Kamakshi formulated a passivity-based neural network controller on dc-dc converters.
Group Members Presented at COMPEL 2025
Prof. Brian Johnson was invited to give a presentation, which is entitled "Imagining Energy Conversion Systems as Circuits", at Power and Energy Conference at Illinois (PECI) 2025.Prof. Brian Johnson as Invited Speaker to Present at PECI 2025
Our graduate student Sohamn Dutta presented his paper, entitled "Completely decentralized active and reactive power control of grid-connected cascaded H-bridge inverters with integrated battery storage" at APEC 2025.Soham Dutta Contributed at APEC 2025
Our graduate student Debjyoti Chatterjee was awarded the best poster in UNIFI General Meeting inb July 2024 for his work entitled “Is Equal Area Criterion Applicable for Transient Stability Assessment of Grid-forming Inverters?”.Debjyoti Chatterjee was Awarded the Best Poster in the UNIFI Annual Meeting (Jan. 2024)!
Prof. Brian Johnson has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, effective August 2025!Prof. Brian Johnson was Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure!
Our graduate student Pranav Chandran won Best Presentation Recognition for his paper "Impedance Emulation Control of Wave Energy Converters" at the 50th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON) 2024!
Pranav Chandran Won Best Presentation Recognition at IECON 2024!
Our graduate students presented at ECCE 2024 in Phoenix, AZ.
Group Members Presented at ECCE 2024
Weiqian Cai presented his paper on singular-perturbation-based grid-forming control design. Rahul Mallik and Debjyoti Chatterjee proposed a fault ride-through for cascaded inverters using mixed grid-forming and grid-following control. Pranav Chandran formulated a method of power-electronics-based wave energy system emulation.
Our graduate students alongwith Prof. Brian Johnson attended PESGM 2024 in Seattle, WA.
Kamakshi Tatkare presented her paper on wind turbine emulation.
Group Members Presented at PESGM 2024
Our group proudly hosted the IEEE International Future Energy Challenge (IFEC) 2024, held from July 14 to July 17 on the UT Austin campus. This year’s competition brought together top undergraduate engineering teams from around the world to tackle a demanding real-world design problem: the development of a high-performance stereo switch-mode audio power amplifier operating from a 48 V DC supply.
Our Group Successfully Hosted IEEE IFEC 2024 at UT Austin!
Under the leadership of Prof. Brian Johnson as General Chair, and with the dedicated support of other group members and collaborators across UT ECE, IEEE PELS, IAS, and PSMA, the IFEC 2024 finals were successfully executed—combining technical rigor, hands-on testing, and global student engagement.
We would like to express special thanks to Belle Howell for her outstanding contributions throughout the event. From managing logistics and team coordination, Belle’s efforts were instrumental in ensuring the smooth and successful execution of IFEC 2024.
After intense on-site testing and technical presentations, the top awards were announced:
Finalist teams also included students from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, ETF Belgrade, University of Kassel, and Utah State University.
Our group successfully hosted the UNIFI Annual Meeting on UT Austin on February 6-7, 2024. This latest gathering featured in-depth technical presentations from consortium members, big-picture viewpoints from invited speakers across academia and industry, and posters from our student researchers. Early results from the 1 MW multi-vendor experiment coming together at the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) drew a lot of discussion, as did unifi’s latest endeavor to set up agile teams focusing on cross-cut topics relevant across the wide spectrum of the consortium’s activities including: control under constraints, stability limitations/interactions of GFM technology with multiple devices, scalability in simulation and control architectures, and certification.
Our Group Successfully Hosted the UNIFI Annual Meeting (Feb. 2024)!
Congrats to Rahul Mallik for earning his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering!
Congrats to Rahul Mallik for earning his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering!
At ECCE 2023 graduate student Weiqian Cai contributed to a paper on emulating single-phase air conditioners using power electronics inverters.
Weiqian Cai Contributed at ECCE 2023
This paper, which is entitled Benchmarking Nonlinear Oscillators for Grid-Forming Inverter Control, was written by Minghui Lu, Sairaj Dhople, and Brian Johnson. This work was supported by the DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office under award number EE0009025.
Our Paper Selected as a 2022 Prize Paper in the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics!
Prof. Brian Johnson with graduate students Weiqian Cai, Rahul Mallik, Debjyoti Chatterjee, and Kamakshi Tatkare presented in the poster session at the UNIFI Annual Meeting at the Georgia Tech campus January 24-25.
Group Members at UNIFI Annual Meeting (Jan. 2023)
Prof. Brian Johnson received the NSF CAREER award to develop methods for modeling, analyzing, and building multiphysics energy systems.Prof. Brian Johnson Received NSF CAREER Award
The UNIFI Consortium was officially launched!The UNIFI Consortium was Officially Launched!
At ECCE 2021 Nimesh Vamanan contributed to a paper on modeling three-level neutral point clamped converters, and Soham Dutta proposed a decentralized controller for ripple minimization in parallel-connected dc-dc systems. Minghui Lu and Rahul Mallik formulated methods for equipping VOC inverters with current limiting and MPPT capabilities.Group Members Contributed at ECCE 2021
UW, along with NREL and EPRI, will co-load lead the Universal Interoperability for Grid-Forming Inverters (UNIFI) Consortium. This is a $25M DOE-funded organization composed of 12 universities, 4 national labs, and numerous industry partners.UW to Co-lead Universal Interoperability for Grid-Forming Inverters (UNIFI) Consortium
At APEC 2021 Soham Dutta presented decentralized controllers for symmetric PWM interleaving in series-connected setups.Soham Dutta Presented at APEC 2021
