Professor Ali Emadi, director of IIT’s Electric Power and Power Electronics Center (EPPEC), is an award-winning expert, who has developed one of the best power electronics and motor drives teaching labs in the nation at IIT (Grainger Foundation Laboratories). While exceptionally passionate about teaching, he has established a solid research program focused on pioneering sustainable energy-efficient solutions from advanced power electronic converters and electric motor drives to electric, hybrid electric, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
Emadi’s research group is a leader in electric-hybrid vehicular research. According to him, “The biggest challenge of our time is in the area of energy and power. Transportation is at the heart of this challenge and electrification of vehicles is the best sustainable solution to move forward. We should increase the electrification level of propulsion systems as much as possible and move towards all-electric as quickly as possible.”
Hybrid electric cars have been on the market for years and are steadily becoming a sought after high-tech commodity in showrooms. Although consumers can help the ecosystem by shopping for hybrid cars, the vehicle in your driveway is not the only environmental offender that can be improved by hybrid technology.
Public transit, military vehicles, and private transportation providers account for a sizeable portion of the world’s fossil fuel use and pollution. By conducting research including retrofitting sport utility vehicles with electric hybrid systems and hybridizing transit and school buses, Emadi’s team is transforming some less glamorous “working” vehicles that are in desperate need of change.
Emadi believes plug-in hybrid technology is the best practical solution to move forward. His proposed long-term sustainable solution includes (1) integrating the transportation industry with the electric power industry, (2) using electricity as the carrier, and (3) generating electricity from renewable energy sources: solar, wind, hydro, etc.
His ground-breaking research in hybrid/plug-in hybrid electric systems is two-fold including an adaptive controller, i.e., “brain” of the vehicle, which is optimized in real-time, a process that improves the fuel economy drastically, without sacrificing performance. The second facet of the research is the creation of unique integrated electro-mechanical drive trains.
