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Dr. Akshay Rathore, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Concordia university in Montreal, Canada and Prominent Lecturer within the IEEE Industry Applications Society, was recently presented with the 2020 IEEE Bimal Bose Award for Industrial Electronics Applications in Energy Systems. His receipt of this award was made possible thanks to such donations to the IEEE Foundation as the 2017/2018 Myron Zucker Student-Faculty Grant, for which Akshay was the project leader.

Established in 2014 by IEEE Life Fellow Dr. Bimal Bose, whose contributions to the growth of power electronics in IEEE spanned more than five decades, the IEEE Bimal Bose Award recognizes young Researchers who make outstanding contributions to the field of Industrial Electronics applied to Power Electronics and Energy Systems. The Myron Zucker Student-Faculty Grant, established through the IEEE Foundation in 1996 by inventor, author, and patent-holder Myron Zucker, annually awards up to two grants of $25,000 for projects leading to publications from electrical engineering research and was
awarded to Akshay’s team at Concordia University in 2017/2018 for their work in “High-Density Wide-Band Gap Based Variable Frequency Power Factor Correction AC/DC Rectifier for More Electric Aircraft.”

Within his department, Akshay said that the Myron Zucker Grant has since supported Ph.D. scholar Dr. Sivanagaraju Gangavarapu in developing experimental facilities for conducting research on power supplies for more electric aircrafts (MEAs) as well as activities by two other scholars set to graduate this year. “To my research group, this grant is a backbone of the transportation electrification program and the publication record, technology development, and training of scholars that it funds will help
attract Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada research grants in coming years,” Akshay said. At the same time, “the financial support provided through the Myron Zucker Grant enabled research that helped contribute to my receipt of the Bimal Bose Award, which recognizes the culmination of my research efforts over the last 10 years.”

According to Akshay, receipt of the Myron Zucker Grant and Bimal Bose Award are extremely meaningful to him professionally. “In addition to being highly competitive awards that add substantial value to my profile, I feel proud and honored that distinguished peer evaluators have recognized me for research contributions that benefit the power engineering community,” he said.

Overall, “IEEE represents a professional home for engineering researchers and has both connected me to well-accomplished peers and offered me numerous opportunities to learn and grow over the years,” concluded a grateful Akshay. “From holding AdCom/Executive board positions and facilitating events to engaging in such activities as IEEE conference committees, technical committees, and standing committees, IEEE has provided visibility to my work, enabled me to develop my skills, and helped me transform myself from student researcher to young professional and now mentor.”

The recently-announced recipients of the 2020/2021 Myron Zucker Student-Faculty Grant include the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at FAMU-Florida State University for their project on “Enhancing the Security of Distributed Cyber-Physical Energy Systems: A Bottom-Up Approach to
Protect and Authenticate Grid Embedded Devices” and Tampere University in Finland for their project on “Robustness Enhancement of Model Predictive Control for Medium Voltage Drives (RMPC4MVD).”