Along with a large cohort of UIUC Power Students, SPG graduate students Ryan Billings and Aidan Rogers received the Grainger Power Award. The Other Dr. Stillwell also showed up in support.
SPG Undergraduate Researchers Sandra Georgy, Alec Loessy, Dora Stavenger, and Jonathan Sengstock were also honored with the award!
Members of the SPG and friends gathered at the Dr. Stillwells’ house to enjoy comradery and dinner. Special thanks to the other Dr. Stillwell for help hosting and photography.
Andrew Freeman and William Vavrik were awarded the Grainger Power Engineering Award for 2025. They joined an excellent class of undergraduate and graduate UIUC power engineering students for a night of celebration with Power and Energy faculty and Grainger College of Engineering leadership. Congratulations!
Stillwell Power Group Graduate Research Assistant Aria Delmar has received the Qualcomm Graduate Award for Spring 2025! Aria was recognized for her academic excellence and her research into point-of-load power converters for high performance compute loads.
The Stillwell Power Group participated in the UIUC Coordinated Science Laboratory Compute Energy Nexus Workshop. The workshop brought together internal and external experts to discuss two major societal, research and technology-specific topics: 1) Data Centers and Energy Optimization, and 2) Data Centers and Smart Grid. Dr. Stillwell gave a talk titled: Point-of-Load Converters: Status and Future (special thanks to Dr. Yicheng Zhu for contributing slides) and Aria Delmar and William Vavrik presented a poster on their work for current-sourced Point-of-Load converters.
Aria Delmar presented “Control and Modeling of Current-Sourced Hybrid Switched-Capacitor Converters with Dynamic Loads” at the 2024 IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL) conference in Lahore, Pakistan. First author Will Vavrick was unable to attend, but the paper and presentation received excellent feedback.
AJ Bali won a best presentation award for his talk titled “A 7-Level Interleaved Hybrid Active Neutral Point Clamped Converter for High-Frequency Low-Inductance Motors” at the 2024 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).
SPG researcher William Vavrik received the James M. Henderson Fellowship for the 2024-25 academic year. The fellowship was established to recognize an outstanding first-year graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The fellowship is awarded based upon the nominee’s undergraduate academic achievement, as well as leadership in activities or research as an undergraduate. Congrats Will!