There are more than 15 million electric motors manufactured every day worldwide. In fact, more than 50 percent of the world’s electricity is consumed by electric motors. A revolution in the electric motor industry has taken place over the last several decades, resulting in motors that are up to 99 percent efficient in large power applications. Despite these advances, most fractional horsepower motors in use today have an efficiency of about 40 to 60 percent. Manufacturers have been reluctant to accept more efficient advanced motors because they are more expensive due to the extra power electronic hardware used to control the motors.

Emadi’s research team has developed a patented digital technological breakthrough in motor drive design and control that is extremely simple and far less expensive to implement than existing technology. This invention can transform standard, ho-hum appliances into ‘smart,’ variable speed appliances that can be controlled by a computer chip—allowing for a plethora of sophisticated new products at a much lower cost. Integrating “dumb” appliances with computerized technology is estimated to create a cost savings ten-times cheaper than the existing technology, which will allow the appliance industry to compete on innovative products.

Srdjan Lukic came to the United States to study engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1999. He was immediately hooked on green technology and has since received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees (’02, ’04, ’07) in electrical engineering all from IIT. Under the guidance of Professor Ali Emadi, Lukic worked for seven years at IIT’s Power Electronics and Motor Drives Lab researching topics including digital control of electric motor drives, renewable energy systems, hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and energy storage systems.

Lukic’s passion to make the world greener has led him to several renewable energy related projects. Most recently he was the team leader of the solar/battery hybrid smart auto rickshaw project. In addition to his scholarly projects, he worked for two years as an electrical development engineer at Firefly Energy, Inc., which is a spin-out company of Caterpillar, Inc. At Firefly, Lukic worked to optimize carbon/graphite foam-based lead acid batteries for hybrid electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Lukic defended his Ph.D. dissertation in November 2007 and stayed as a post-doctoral senior research associate with Dr. Emadi’s Lab until spring 2008. Following his post-doc work at IIT, Lukic joined North Carolina State University as a tenure-track assistant professor.

Over the past four years, five of Emadi’ doctoral graduates have joined prestigious universities in North America as tenure-track faculty members.