Last July, Google and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Power Electronics Society (IEEE PELS) announced the Little Box Challenge, a competition designed to push the forefront of new technologies in the research and development of small, high power density inverters.
In parallel, we announced the Little Box Challenge award program designed to help support academics pursuing groundbreaking research in the area of increasing the power density for DC-to-AC power conversion. We received over 100 proposals and today we are proud to announce the following recipients of the academic awards:
Primary Academic Institution | Principal Investigator |
University of Colorado Boulder | Khurram K. Afridi |
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology | Huang-Jen Chiu |
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid | José A. Cobos |
Texas A&M University | Prasad Enjeti |
ETH Zürich | Johann W. Kolar |
University of Bristol | Neville McNeill |
Case Western Reserve University | Timothy Peshek |
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | Robert Pilawa-Podgurski |
University of Stuttgart | Jörg Roth-Stielow |
Queensland University of Technology | Geoff Walker |
The recipients hail from many different parts of the world and were chosen based on their very strong and thoughtful entries dealing with all the issues raised in the request for proposals. Each of these researchers will receive approximately $30,000 US to support their research into high power density inverters, and are encouraged to use this work to attempt to win the $1,000,000 US grand prize for the Little Box Challenge.
There were many submissions beyond those chosen here that reviewers also considered to be very promising. We encourage all those who did not receive funding to still participate in the Little Box Challenge, and pursue improvements not only in power density, but also in the reliability, efficiency, safety, and cost of inverters (and of course, to attempt to win the grand prize!)
