UA Students Take Home Honors at APEC 2015

Each year for the past five years, faculty, staff and students working at the University of Arkansas and our partner schools have attended the IEEE's APEC (Advanced Power Electronics Conference). This conference is one of the most prominent international conferences for power electronics professionals and we are proud to represent our work, our universities and our research centers.

This year, eight students from the University of Arkansas attended the conference. They are undergraduate and SURF grant recipient Ethan Williams; master's candidates Roderick Garcia and Haoyan Liu; and doctoral candidates Yusi Liu, Sharthak Munasib, Sayan Seal, Janviere Umuhoza, and Yuzhi Zhang. In addition, the NSF Center of Excellence on GRid-connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems (GRAPES) hosted a booth in the conference's exhibition, displaying working prototypes and devices developed by students in their research efforts.

U of A students performed outstandingly this year, with three of the six presentations and posters receiving awards. Sayan Seal's poster, titled "Nanosilver Preform Assisted Die Attach for High Temperature Applications," received the Best Poster award for his poster session. Yuzhi Zhang also won Best Poster during his poster session, for his poster "Realizing an Integrated System for Residential Energy Harvesting and Management." Finally, Roderick Garcia's presentation, "An Evaluation of Selected Solid-State Transformer Topologies for Electric Distribution Systems," was awarded Best Presentation in his section. Congratulations to the U of A students for their great work and to continued success in the future!