Ph.D. students take top honors at Duke University energy conference

Doctoral students Bhaskar Mitra and Pankaj Bhowmik won first and second place, respectively, at the recent Duke Energy Week poster presentation. Only the top 20 teams/individuals were given the opportunity to present during the conference, held at the Fuqua School of Business.

Mitra’s winning presentation was entitled “Protection Coordination for Assembly HVDC Breakers for Bipolar Multi-terminal HVDC Grids Using Wavelet Transform.” A third-year Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Mitra specializes in power systems and protection. Badrul Chowdhury is his Ph.D. advisor.

Bhowmik, a fifth-year senior in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, claimed second for the presentation “Center-Point-Clamped Power Electronic Transformer.” His research interest is design and practical implementation of power electronic converters for distributed renewable energy resources and utility applications. Madhav Manjrekar is his Ph.D. advisor.

Students Mehrdad Biglarbegian, Alireza Javanshir, Amirahmad Zare and Ashutosh Phatak also participated in the Duke Energy Week poster presentation.