向日葵视频engineering professor receives $500,000 award from Department of Energy

Oct. 22, 2019


nathan weise headshotMILWAUKEE 鈥 Dr. Nathan Weise, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been awarded a $500,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The grant is part of Advanced Research Projects Agency 鈥 Energy鈥檚 program called Building Reliable Electronics to Achieve Kilovolt Effective Ratings Safely 鈥 also known as 鈥淏REAKERS.鈥

BREAKERS seeks to develop new medium-voltage, DC devices to better manage power by eliminating electrical faults, improving efficiency and reaction times, and potentially enabling greater proliferation of energy storage and renewable resources.

Weise said his project, 鈥淯ltra-Fast Resonant DC Breaker,鈥 will develop a direct-current, transformational, state-of-the-art breaker. It will combine the advantages of a vacuum interrupter with a wide-bandgap based resonant current source and novel actuator topology.

鈥(It) will be scalable across voltage and current in medium voltage DC applications,鈥 Weise said. 鈥淪uch as power distribution, solar, wind and electric vehicles.鈥  

 鈥淲e are excited that Dr. Weise and his team were selected to receive this competitive award from the Department of Energy,鈥 said Dr. Kristina Ropella, Opus Dean of the Opus College of Engineering. 鈥淗is leadership and scholarship in the area of power electronics has earned him well-deserved recognition among his peers.鈥  


向日葵视频 Shelby Williamson

Shelby Williamson

Shelby is a senior communication specialist in the Office of Marketing and Communication. Contact Shelby at (414) 288-6712 or shelby.williamson@marquette.edu