ECE Department Welcomes Two New Faculty Members

As the fall semester begins, the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering welcomes two new professors who count energy conversion among their research interests. Drs. Jeremy Munday and Alireza Khaligh join ECE as assistant professors.

Dr. Jeremy Munday received his B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from Middle Tennessee State University in 2003 and his Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard in 2008. His thesis work focused on the first experimental demonstration of a repulsive Casimir force and was conducted under the supervision of Federico Capasso. After this, he became a postdoctoral scholar under Harry Atwater in the departments of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech working on plasmonics and photovoltaic devices.

His current research endeavors span a wide range from near field optics, photonics, and plasmonics for energy harvesting to quantum electromechanical phenomena for actuating micro- and nano-mechanical devices.

Prof. Munday is excited to be teaching a course on Solar Energy Conversion this semester and looks forward to future classes on Electricity and Magnetism and Quantum Mechanics. He is also interested in music, and in his free time he recently designed and built a hybrid electric resonator guitar.

Prior to Maryland, Dr. Alizreza Khaligh was an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Energy Harvesting and Renewable Energies Laboratory (EHREL) in the ECE Department at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Dr. Khaligh was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Urbana, IL.

Dr. Khaligh is the recipient of the 2010 Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the 2009 Armour College of Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award from IIT. He also received the 1999 Distinguished Undergraduate Student Award from Sharif University of Technology presented jointly by the Minister of Science, Research and Technology and President of Sharif University.

He is the Program Chair of the 2011 IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference, the Program Co-Chair of the 2012 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference, and the Grants and Awards Chair of the 2012 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC).

Dr. Khaligh is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. He was a Guest Editor for Special Section of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology on Vehicular Energy Storage Systems and also a Guest Editor for Special Section of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics on Energy Harvesting.

He is the principle author/co-author of more than 80 refereed papers, two pending patents, as well as two books including Energy Harvesting: Solar, Wind, and Ocean Energy Conversion Systems (CRC Press, Dec. 2009), and Integrated Power Electronics Converters and Digital Control (CRC Press, May 2009). His research interests are mainly focused in the areas of power electronics, renewable energy systems, energy harvesting, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, electric vehicles and Smart Grid technologies.

Published September 14, 2011