On Thursday 19 November, the French chapter of the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) recognised two SuperGrid Institute PhD students at its annual PhD and Engineer of the Year awards ceremony: Piotr Dworakowski and Florian Errigo. We are very proud to see two colleagues from our Power Electronics & Converters Programme being rewarded in this way! A well-deserved achievement for them both!

During the ceremony, Piotr Dworakowski presented his work on the modelling and analysis of medium-frequency transformers: key elements in the development of power converters for the electricity networks of the future. His thesis, that he has worked on for the past 5 years in parallel with his other professional commitments, was supervised by Andrzej Wilk and Michał Michna, both of Gdańsk University of Technology, as well as Michel Mermet-Guyennet from SuperGrid Institute / Alstom Transport and Bruno Lefebvre, SuperGrid Institute / General Electric.

“This prize is an important award, highlighting 5 years of work with the IEEE community: a world reference in electrical engineering”, explains Piotr Dworakowski.

Florian Errigo, who defended his thesis at our premises in October, also presented his thesis on power converters with integrated energy storage to meet the challenges of resilience and reliability in high-voltage DC networks. His thesis was supervised by Pascal Venet and Ali Sari both of the Laboratoire Ampere – Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 as well as Florent Morel and Laurent Chedot from SuperGrid Institute.

“I’m very proud. I appreciate it even more because I didn’t expect it at all! Above all, this distinction recognises the work we completed as a team and marks the great adventure we have experienced together. And it is all the more gratifying to share this award with Piotr, who is the reason I came to SuperGrid Institute in the first place!”, explains Florian Errigo.

Piotr Dworakowski and Florian Errigo are the 3rd and 4th members of our team to be honoured by the French office of the IEEE PES for their work within the SuperGrid Institute since 2017, proof of our dedication to excellence at innovation within our institute.

Our close collaborator Raphaël Caire was also honoured in the ceremony with the “Outstanding engineer 2020” award. Raphaël Caire, Senior Lecturer at the Grenoble Polytechnic Institute, has been heavily involved in our Training programme in recent years.

Congratulations to all three prize winners who we are very happy to count among our colleagues!