Free ticketed event
This presentation will discuss the educational needs in electric power systems today. With climate change upon us, of our own making, how we produce, transmit and consume electricity must undergo a radical change. This presentation will contend that this climate crisis is a great opportunity for us, leading to the renaissance of electric power engineering.
In doing so, we need to have a holistic understanding of “power systems,” recognizing that power electronics, electric drives, economics, public policy, etc. will all play crucial roles in next-generation power systems. And, therefore, a large number of courses are needed that are synergistic.
This presentation will argue the following: 1) We should teach a university-wide climate-change-related course on power/energy to freshman that could also be taught in high schools; 2) To juniors and seniors, we should offer only a very few carefully designed courses to train them broadly; and 3) At the graduate level, we should be open to allowing our graduates to take a few online courses for credit from outside of their home institutions, because no university has either the required faculty nor the critical mass of students to teach certain courses.
Ned Mohan (LF-IEEE) joined the University of Minnesota in 1975, where he is Oscar A. Schott Professor of Power Electronic Systems and Morse-Alumni Distinguished Professor. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur in 1967. His PhD in Electrical Engineering and Master’s in Nuclear Engineering are from UW-Madison. He has written 5 textbooks; all together, they have been translated into eight languages. He has graduated 46 PhDs. His area of research is in power electronics applied to power systems and he holds several patents.
Ned Mohan received the H.T. Morse Distinguished Teaching Award for undergraduate education from the University of Minnesota in 2007. He has received 2008 IEEE-PES Outstanding Educator Award, 2010 IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award, 2010 UWIG Achievement Award from Utility Wind Integration Group, 2011 Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT-Kharagpur (India), and 2012 IEEE Power & Energy Society Ramakumar Family Renewable Energy Excellence Award. In 2013, he received the Innovative Program Award from the ECE Department Heads Association made up of over 250 U.S. universities. In 2014, he received the Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Minnesota and the IEEE Nari Hingorani FACTS Award from the IEEE Power & Energy Society.
He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
https://ece.umn.edu/directory/mohan-ned/