Timothy Peshek, research assistant professor of materials science and engineering who is part of the Solar Durability and Lifetime Extension Center, is one of just 10 researchers from around the world to receive funding through Google’s Little Box Challenge Academic Awards.
In July, Google and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Power Society (IEEE PELS) announced the $1 million Little Box Challenge—a competition to further new technologies in the research and development of small, high-power density inverters. They also announced a special academic award program to support academics pursuing groundbreaking research in the area of increasing the power density for DC-to-AC power conversion.
More than 100 researchers from around the world applied; winners included researchers from Texas A&M University, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and Queensland University of Technology, to name a few. Each recipient receives approximately $30,000 to support his/her research into high-power density inverters. They all are encouraged to use this work to attempt to win the overall Little Box Challenge.
Each recipient was chosen based on his/her entry dealing with the issues raised in the request for proposals.
Peshek’s research interests include materials informatics and physics-guided multivariate modeling, power electronics performance modeling and design, semiconductor device physics, and thin film deposition.
For more information on the Little Box Challenge, visit littleboxchallenge.com/.