Udaya K. Madawala graduated with a B.Sc. (Electrical Engineering) (Hons) degree from The University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, and received his PhD (Power Electronics) from The University of Auckland, New Zealand as a Commonwealth Doctoral Scholar. At the completion of his PhD, he was employed by Fisher & Paykel Ltd, New Zealand, as a Research and Development Engineer to develop new technologies for motor drives. At present as a Full Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Auckland, New Zealand, he leads a group of researchers focusing on a number of power electronics projects that are related to energy and wireless EV charging systems for V2X applications. Udaya is a Fellow of the IEEE and was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Power Electronic Society (PELS), and has both industry and research experience in the fields of power electronics and energy. He has served both the IEEE Power Electronics and Industrial Electronics Societies in numerous roles, relating to editorial, advisory, conference, technical committees and chapter activities. He was the General Chair of the 2nd IEEE Southern Power Electronics Conference (SPEC)- 2016, held in New Zealand, and is also the Chair of SPEC Steering Committee. Udaya, who has over 300 journal and conference publications, holds a number of patents related to wireless power transfer (WPT) and power converters, and is a consultant to industry.
A/Professor Farhad Shahnia received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, in 2012. He is currently an A/Professor at Murdoch University. Before that, he was a Lecturer at Curtin University (2012-15), a research scholar at QUT (2008-11), and an R&D engineer at the Eastern Azarbayjan Electric Power Distribution Company, Iran (2005-08). He is currently a Fellow member of Engineers Australia, Senior Member of IEEE, and member of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education. Farhad’s research falls under Distribution networks, Microgrid and Smart grid concepts. He has authored one book and 11 book chapters and 250+ peer-reviewed scholarly articles in international conferences and journals, as well as being an editor of 6 books. Farhad has won 5 Best Paper Awards in various conferences and has also received the IET Premium Award for the Best Paper published in the IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution journal in 2015. One of his articles was listed under the top-25 most cited articles in the Electric Power System Research Journal in 2015 while one of his 2015 journal articles has been listed under the top-5 most read articles of the Australian Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. He was the recipient of the Postgraduate Research Supervisor Award from Curtin University in 2015 and the Australia-China Young Scientist Exchange Award from the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering in 2016. Farhad is currently a Subject Editor, Deputy Subject Editor, and Associate Editor of several journals including IEEE Access, IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution, IET Renewable Power Generation, IET Smart Grid, IET Energy Conversion and Economics, and International Transaction on Electrical Energy Systems and has served 40+ conferences in various roles such as General, Technical, Program, Publication, Publicity, Award, Sponsorship, and Special Session Chairs. Farhad has led the IEEE Western Australia Section as the 2020-2021 Chair, and was the 2019 Founding Chair of the IEEE Western Australia Industrial Electronics Society (IES) Chapter. He was the 2023 Vice-chair of the IES’s Technical Committees on Smart Grids.
Qian Xiao received the Ph.D. degree and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Tianjin University, where he is currently an associate professor (exceptional promotion) and Ph.D. supervisor. He has been awarded 2020 (the First Session) Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Nomination Award of China Power Supply Society, 2022 Selective Introduction of Postdoctoral Science Funding Winners, Fan-Ke Outstanding Review Experts for Postgraduate Dissertations, long-term visiting scholar of Aalborg University, Denmark (2018.10-2019.11). His research interests include distributed energy and distribution network/microgrid, power electronics technology (multilevel converter, etc.) and its application in integrated energy system and BESSs, and other power electronics-based power systems. He is the principal investigator of 11 items of representative longitudinal funding, including the Youth Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Joint Funds of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and State Grid Corporation of China (Key Program), Subproject of National Key Research and Development Program of China, Joint Funds of Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (General Program), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Special Foundation Program and General Program), the Key Program of Open Project of State Key Laboratory of Power System Operation and Control of Tsinghua University, Program of Education and Teaching Reform, and etc. As the first author or corresponding author, he has published more than 20 papers in top SCI journals (top 20%), including more than 10 papers in first-class journals (top 5%) on Journal Citation Ranking from the Chinese Academic of Science. As the first inventor, he holds more than 10 granted invention patents (including an international invention patent), 3 national software copyrights, and 1 licensed patent. He has been awarded 1 First Prize and 3 items of Second Prize of the ministerial and provincial-level awards (including the Second Prize of Tianjin Science and Technology Progress Award in 2022, ranking 2nd). In addition, he received the Excellent Supervisor Award of the 2022 China International Solar Decathlon Competition (Final Champion), Excellent Supervisor Award of Tianjin University, Best Paper/Presentation/Poster Awards of international conferences, 2022 Top Ten Associate Editor Award of the first-class SCI journal, and Excellent Reviewer Awards of EI authoritative journals, such as Proceedings of the CSEE, Transactions of China Electrotechnical Society, and Automation of Electric Power Systems.
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