SPEC has a part time job position in FPGA Programming. The following skills are required. Undergraduate or graduate students are encouraged to apply to jakirk@ncsu.edu. This is an hourly wage position.

Skillful in programming and debugging VHDL language; Skillful in Altra 10K series FPGA, including configuration of Altra FPGA and design board for FPGA; Familiar in Xilinx FPGA; Familiar in PCI communication.

An active search is underway for a new faculty in the area of power electronics or power system. Candidates at all ranks will be considered. Successful candidate will teach and conduct research in collaboration with other faculty at SPEC. For more information on this position and to apply, please visit NC State University job application site here.

ABB and Progress Energy recently joined the SPEC Consortium for Advanced Power Electronics and Energy Storage (CAPES). CAPES is set up to forge closer industry-university relationship in the ever increasingly important area of electric power system power management research and education. SPEC graduate students will use the funding to conduct research in the areas of electric power system, utility power electronics and energy storage.

For more details about CAPES, please contact SPEC

NC State’s Semiconductor Power Electronics Center (SPEC) is featured in a recent issue of RESULT, an NCSU research magazine. Read more about this at: www.ncsu.edu/research/results

The just concluded second annual SPEC Power Electronics and Power System Seminar is a great success. More than one hundred people from industry and academia participated in this year's event. The inputs we received from industry are very encouraging and useful. We will implement many of your suggestions into our future research work and into the third annual SPEC seminar in 2007.

The second Annual SPEC Power Electronics and Power System Seminar will be held on April 26, 2006 on the centennial campus of NC State, Raleigh. This seminar is free and open to all industry and academic visitors. During the seminar, students and faculty from NCSU will present their work in the area of SiC power electronics , power management microsystems , utility applications of power electronics and electric power systems . A lab tour and poster session will be organized in the afternoon. During the lab tour, the grid-tie demonstration of a 4.5 MVA ETO Based STATCOM will be held. SPEC faculty and students sincerely invite your participation in this exciting event. Registration is required and can be done by clicking the link below.

Intel and Volterra has recently joined the newly launched SPEC Power Management Consortium (PMC). PMC is set up to forge closer industry-university relationship in the ever increasingly important area of power management research and education. SPEC graduate students will use the funding to conduct pre-competitive research in the area of mixed signal controller IC design, high frequency system-on-chip converter design as well as chip-scale passive components.

Other PMC members are: International Rectifier, Fairchild Semiconductor, Vishay. For more details about PMC, please contact SPEC

Professor Alex Huang, Alcoa Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of SPEC, has been elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer. Dr. Huang was cited by IEEE for his “contributions to emitter turn-off thyristor and its applications". Dr. Huang earned his PhD in electrical engineering at Cambridge University in 1992 and joined the NCSU faculty in 2004.

SPEC Power Management Consortium (PMC) is set up to forge closer industry-university relationship in the ever increasingly important area of power management research and education. SPEC graduate students will use the funding to conduct pre-competitive research in the area of mixed signal controller IC design, high frequency system-on-chip converter design as well as chip-scale passive components.

Current PMC members are: International Rectifier, Fairchild Semiconductor, Vishay. For more details about PMC, please contact SPEC

SPEC researchers have recently demonstrated successfully the grid tie operation of a 4.5 MVA STATCOM. The STATCOM is based on the Gen-3 Emitter Turn-off (ETO) thyristor technology developed by SPEC and a three level converter topology. The grid demonstration was conducted at 480V and 500A, still much lower than the STATCOM full power level. This is limited t=by SPEC lab's current configuration.