The Institute

The research projects at PES covered a wide range of application areas and all basic forms of power electronic energy conversion and were carried out by 20+ PhD students, closely supported by Fellow Researchers, Postdocs, and Prof. Kolar. This also included a research group focusing on advanced mechatronic systems. At that time, research projects were funded by industry or other partners, contributing approximately 60% to the funding of the PhD students, with collaborations typically lasting 1 to 3 years. The negotiation and preparation of contracts, as well as overall project monitoring, were performed by an Industry Relations Manager with legal support from the ETH Transfer department. The administration of PES included, apart from the secretariat, general administration (personnel and project accounting, ordering of components, and inventory), and computer systems administration, as well as an electronics laboratory equipped with the latest equipment to support the PhD students in constructing near-industry prototypes. Moreover, PES utilized the excellent infrastructure of the D-ITET central mechanical workshop for manufacturing and rapid prototyping (3D printing) of various mechanical parts and complex geometries.

PES was endowed with 6 PhD research laboratories and an EMI laboratory for conducted emission measurements. It was equipped with the latest generation of AC, DC, and medium-voltage power supplies, signal sources, and measuring and testing equipment, including thermal imaging. The computer infrastructure was based on 15 compute servers, as well as laptops and PCs. The available software packages included general scientific programs, FEM software packages for EM field calculations, and multi-domain software platforms. Additionally, software tools developed by PES were used for circuit simulation and the design of magnetic components in research and education.