Jin Wang receives NSF CAREER Award

Jin Wang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER award is the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

Prof Wang received a $400,000 grant to support his research on power electronics and high voltage intensive solutions for very large scale megawatt photovoltaic systems. The objective of this research is to significantly enhance the efficiency and lower the cost of very large scale (VLS) megawatt photovoltaic (PV) power plants by deriving and realizing a new generation of power electronics circuits and associated control strategies for a hybrid PV-battery system.

The project will also include a comprehensive education plan, consisting of a collaborative one-day solar energy/smart grid workshop for K-12 teachers, a hardware-in-the-loop simulation platform for use in training college students, and a long-term internship program with the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez.

Prof. Wang leads the ECE department’s efforts to reinvigorate electrical power engineering education by developing an interdisciplinary curriculum to train the next generation of power engineers on smart grid technologies. He also supervises Ohio State’s High Voltage and Power Electronics Laboratory, one of only a handful of high voltage laboratories operated by a university. Prof. Wang joined Ohio State in 2007.