Qing-Chang Zhong
Illinois Institute of Technology’s Armour College of Engineering has named Dr. Qing-Chang Zhong as the Max McGraw Endowed Chair of Energy and Power Engineering and Management and Electrical and Computing Engineering (ECE) Professor, effective August 1, 2014.
Dr. Zhong joins IIT from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, where he is currently a Chair Professor in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, the only department in the UK dedicated to control and systems engineering and the largest of its kind in Europe. He received Ph.D’s in Control and Power Engineering (’04) from the Imperial College London and in Control Theory and Engineering (’99) from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, his MsEE in Control Engineering (’97) from Hunan University, and his B.S. in Electrical Engineering (‘90) from Xiangtan Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Technology (now Hunan Institute of Engineering).
Zhong has established himself in both energy systems and control with a myriad of patents, publications, awards, grants, and years of research. He has a strong record of funding that includes industrial and funding agencies along with clear success as a research collaborator and project leader.
A leading researcher, Zhong is recognized worldwide in energy systems and control engineering. He has extensive experiences in hardware such as AC and DC drives, PLCs, motors, microcomputers (Intel, Atmel, Motorola, Xilog, NEC), software and 100KB objective code using assembly language, and 10,000 line using C language, which was then further developed with database and PowerBuilder. Other research activities include theories in process and robust control within control engineering. He is also further developing AC/DC drives and power converters with research in distributed generation, power electronics and power system damping control, wind turbine, grid-connection of renewable energy power supplies, etc. Through this work he attracts additional funding to work on wind power and operate grid-connected inverters as synchronous generators. This work garnered high honors like the 2009 Highly Commended IET Innovation Award 2009 and a Senior Research Fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Leverhulme Trust to work on power electronics and renewable energy.
Along with five patents, Dr. Zhong has also authored or co-authored more than 140 publications on energy systems and control, including three research monographs, and 44 academic journal papers, 61 conference papers, and over 26 journal papers in Chinese. His research monograph entitled Control of Power Inverters in Renewable Energy and Smart Grid Integration (Wiley-IEEE Press, 2013) once made a No. 7 Amazon Best Seller in power generation and distribution. His fourth research monograph on next-generation smart grids is scheduled for publication by Wiley-IEEE Press in 2015.
Zhong is a Senior Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Fellow of The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He also is the Vice Chair of International Federation Automatic Control Technical Committees 6.4 (Power and Energy Systems) and 2.2 (Linear Control Systems). Zhong is a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Power Electronics Society, United Kingdom representative for the European Control Association (EUCA), and Founding Director of both the Loughborough Centre in Control Engineering (2011-2012) and the New EPSRC funded Network for New Academics in Control Engineering (2007-2011).
He is the Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, IEEE Access, IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, European Journal of Control, and Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society. Dr. Zhong has previously served on the International Program Committees of 22 conferences.
The search committee for the Max McGraw professorship was composed of Professors Alex Flueck, Ashfaq Khokhar, Zuyi Li, Ganesh Raman (Mechanical Materials and Aerospace Engineering), Navid Sabbaghi (Stuart School of Business), Mohammad Shahidepour, John Shen and Geoffrey Williamson. Wanda Reder (Vice-President, S&C Electric Company) and Paul McCoy (Co Founder and President, Trans-Elect) served as external search committee members. The chair of the search committee was Professor Jafar Saniie.