Nottingham leads £18 million national power electronics research centre

PA 216/13 A new £18 million national research centre into power electronics, a technology that underpins and is vital to UK industry and the economy, is to be led by academics at The University of Nottingham. The EPSRC National Centre of Excellence for Power Electronics will have its coordinating hub at Nottingham, led by Professor Mark Johnson in the University's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering , but will also involve researchers at the universities of Manchester, Newcastle, Cambridge, Greenwich, Bristol, Sheffield, Strathclyde, Warwick and Imperial College London. The centre will also be working closely with industrial partners to stimulate knowledge transfer and to take new components and devices from the lab to the marketplace. Professor Johnson said: "Most people will be unfamiliar with the term 'power electronics' but it is a pervasive technology. Power electronics is at the heart of anything that utilises or manages electrical energy from the smallest handheld mobile devices right up to the largest energy networks and renewable generation. "Leading this new centre puts Nottingham at the forefront of developing the next generation of power electronics components and devices which are cheaper, smaller, lighter, and more energy efficient and durable.