A doctoral candidate at the Cullen College of Engineering took home an outstanding paper presentation award at the 2022 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference in March.
Hussain Sayed, a doctoral candidate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and at the Power Electronics, Microgrids, and Subsea Electrical Systems Center (PEMSEC), was awarded for his research presentation on GaN / reliability. Sayed is a student of Harish Krishnamoorthy, an ECE Assistant Professor and the Associate Director of PEMSEC. For the past 35 years, APEC has served as the major conference for practicing power electronics professionals in North America.
Sayed described his research as working to improve the reliability of the DC-DC power converters based GaN devices for critical applications like data centers.
“For critical applications, there is a compelling need for efficient and reliable power density solutions with in-situ health monitoring and RUL prediction,” Sayed said. “From that point of view, my Ph.D. research work focuses on designing intelligent, efficient, compact and modular DC-DC power converters based on Gallium Nitride (GaN) power devices, along with an integrated in-situ lifetime monitoring that can maximize the converter usage, but at the same time, ensure data center availability.”
Sayed has had an unconventional path to the University of Houston, with the journey starting in his home country of Iraq. In 2014, he started pursuing a Master's degree at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. After earning that degree, he planned to continue his studies toward a doctorate there, but had to return to Iraq after six months for personal reasons.
However, Sayed worked as a lecturer at an engineering college in Iraq, and took steps to continue his education path in the United States. Sayed was also able to use the lockdown caused by the global pandemic to focus on his educational goals.
“I took advantage and started communicating with a few professors inside the U.S. to start my Ph.D. study,” he said. “One of the offers I received was from the University of Houston. Given the research advancement and diversity at UH, I decided to pursue my doctorate study there.”
After finishing his doctorate, Sayed hopes to work as a professional engineer before potentially working in academia again.
“While I am almost in the mid of my doctoral study, my goal is to be a professional engineer with rich real-world experience, before moving back to academia as a professor,” he said.