Dan M. Ionel, Ph.D., Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky director, IEEE Fellow, professor of electrical engineering and L. Stanley Pigman Chair in Power, has received the prestigious Cyril G. Veinott Award. This is the highest distinction for electromechanical energy conversion, conferred to only one individual each year, by the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES), which has approximately 40,000 members and is one of the largest societies within the IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology. The Veinott Award is normally presented at the annual IEEE PES General Meeting, which this year was scheduled in Montreal, Canada, but due to current pandemic conditions was held online.
Dr. Ionel, who joined UK in 2015, currently teaches EGR 240 - Global Energy Issues, a core requirement for the Power and Energy Undergraduate Certificate, and a very popular class with almost 200 student enrollments each year. He also teaches advanced undergraduate and graduate-level electrical engineering elective courses at the 500 and 600 level on topics of renewable energy, electric power systems, electric and hybrid vehicles and aircrafts.
His immediate research group, the SPARK Laboratory, is working on projects with a total multi-million dollar budget sponsored by NSF, DOE, NASA, and directly by industry and power utilities, and includes more than 10 researchers, most of whom are Ph.D. students. Dr. Ionel is currently developing the new SPARKS Laboratories, which are located in the recently modernized Grehan Hall, and benefit of large support from the university, industry, utilities, and private donors.
Since 2015, together with his research students and collaborators, Dr. Ionel co-authored more than 100 journal and conference papers, on topics of alternative and renewable energy technologies, battery energy storage, electric machines and power electronic drives, electric power systems, smart grids and buildings, and 3 books, including “Renewable Energy Devices and Systems – Simulations with MATLAB and ANSYS” published by CRC Press.
More information and Dr. Ionel’s acceptance speech for the Veinott Award are available on the SPARK website (http://sparklab.engr.uky.edu/). At UK, Dr. Ionel also serves as the Director of the Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky (PEIK) (https://www.engr.uky.edu/power), a multi-disciplinary organization with more than 15 affiliated faculty from different Departments of UK’s College of Engineering.