| Meet the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mahima Gupta Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering |
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Research area The Gupta research group focuses on five key areas: power electronics conversion and control; modular multi-level power converters; motor drive systems; application of wide band-gap semiconductor devices; and electromagnetic interference issues, due to power electronics circuits.
What excites you about your work?
“There are times when I just sit with a blank piece of paper and a pencil. And I just sit with it for hours sometimes. There is no problem statement; there are no objectives; and there are no end goals, except one–try to work on something (I don’t know yet what that thing is) that is new. All of this is in the context of solid-state electronics, circuits that are used for power conversion, looking at: 1) how their forming elements behave, in particular the highly non-linear semiconductor devices; 2) how to use these elements to form circuit designs that can enable power conversion; and 3) taking into account the systems’ perspectives, to make them actually useful in real life. In a world with a variety of energy sources and loads, ranging from batteries, solar panels and fuel cells to delivering energy to the electric grid, our homes, laptops and vehicles, solid-state power electronics are essential. I work in the area of making energy systems better, which excites me.”
What do you hope to achieve?
“Embracing a big picture, holistic approach, I ask myself, can we design power converters to be nearly 100% efficient; fit in the smallest possible amount of space; live a long life, so you only buy them once; and make them good electronic citizens that don’t disturb other devices? One day, I would like to see the co-design and by-design aspects of my research methodology make it into real products that make a big difference. My recent backing from WARF supports the design of gigawatt-scale power converters with the footprint of a football stadium. They have one percent losses, which in a one-gigawatt system is about 10 megawatts of power. Can we make that loss percentage 0.01%, or 0.0001%, and can we fit that converter into a place the size of a basketball court, instead of a football stadium? These are billion-dollar systems with a life of 30 years, so can we make them live 50-100 years? I’d like to see my research make this happen, using a holistic approach.”
Professor Gupta is an expert in power electronics. Their work with power converters shows great advancements with efficiency and we are hopeful to see their work in commercial products in the future.
– Michael Carey, WARF, Licensing Manager
Want to learn more?
Michael Carey, [email protected], 608.960.9867