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New Option Offered in Power Electronics
The ECE department has established a new option in power electronics
for EE undergraduates. The program involves 15 credit hours of
technical electives and is noted on a student's transcript.
Admission to the program is competitive and limited to no more
than 30 students per year. Students must have junior standing.
Power electronics is a cross-disciplinary specialty involving
the use of electronic circuits to convert and control electricity.
The current shortage of power electronics engineers is expected
to grow in coming years with expected breakthroughs in efficiency,
affordability and reliability of power control systems.
Power electronics engineers are needed in many industries to
develop specialized power electronics circuits, develop techniques
to integrate power electronics devices, determine optimal configurations,
design CAD software to enable non-specialists to incorporate
devices, and apply developing technology to a variety of applications.
The new EE option involves three required courses, Power Electronics,
Power Electronics Lab, and Electronics Circuit Design. The other
eight credits may be selected from courses such as RC Active
Filter Design, Electronic Circuit Design, Microelectronics, Control
and Application of Electric Machines, Power System Analysis and
Control, Alternate Energy Systems, and others.
The option was developed in collaboration with the Center
for Power Electronics (CPES), an NSF Engineering Research
Center headquartered at Tech. CPES is also offering undergraduate
fellowships of $2,000 per year, research assistantships from
$400 to $700 per month, and industrial internships in order to
attract more students to the specialty.
For more information on the option or undergraduate fellowships,
assistantships, and internships, please contact Elizabeth Tranter,
CPES outreach director at etranter@vt.edu.
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