EECS College Faculty Members Elevated to IEEE Fellows 2021

Congratulations to Prof. Yaow-Ming Chen and Prof. Ai-Chun Pang

Among the individuals recently elected to the IEEE Fellows Class of 2021, four are from Taiwan and, indeed, two scholars upon whom these honors are conferred, Prof. Yaow-Ming Chen and Prof. Ai-Chun Pang, are affiliated with the NTU College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). This enormous prestige has significantly increased the University’s global influence in the field of electrical and electronics engineering.

Having previously served as the vice chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering at NTU, Prof. Yaow-Ming Chen is currently a faculty member of both the Department as well as the Graduate Institute of Electrical Engineering, and he has made substantial contributions to grid-connected power converters for renewable energy applications. Prof. Chen’s election to IEEE Fellow grade is a recognition of his pioneering research into multi-input converters, grid-connected power converters, and active power decoupling through the years. The new current control method developed by Prof. Chen and his research team is capable of swiftly regulating the DC-bus voltage under power surge/sag or when the power grid’s voltage fluctuates, which allows the grid-connected power converters to continue to function normally. This control method is particularly suitable for renewable power generation systems with fluctuating power, such as solar and wind, and it contributes greatly to raising the share of renewable energy in the overall electricity generation system. Prof. Chen’s groundbreaking research on multi-input converters has led to the publication of four research papers, which have been cited over 1,200 times to date according to Google Scholar. In addition, the technologies associated with the ten U.S. patents that Prof. Chen filed have now been successively transferred to Taiwan manufacturers, and these developments represent success stories of transforming academic research into commercial products. Prof. Chen is also actively involved in international academic affairs. In 2019 he was elected editor-in-chief of IEEE TPEL, the top journal in power electronics and also an electrical and electronics engineering publication with an impact factor ranking among the top 5% to 10%. Prof. Chen has since served in that position, overseeing the review of more than 3,000 research papers submitted annually with his team of over 150 associate editors.

A faculty member of the Graduate Institute of Networking and Multimedia and the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Prof. Ai-Chun Pang currently serves as associate dean of EECS and also holds joint appointments with the Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering and the Internet of Things Research Center. Having made significant contributions to the field of mobile networks in terms of innovations and applications, Prof. Pang has been elected IEEE Fellow for her research on low-latency communications, mobile multimedia services, and real-time Internet of Things applications. Prof. Pang has also pioneered the architecture of fog-radio access networks and is a leader in 5G communications from traditional cloud computing to distributed edge computing, creating the emerging field of research “Edge Intelligence”, which are important breakthroughs in technology. The mobile video platform with fog computing, developed by Prof. Pang and her research team, has been deployed on a large scale in smart cities and has spawned a number of technology startups. Their efforts have also won international accolades, a testament to the significance of academic research to the industry. For the important contributions to her field of expertise, Prof. Pang earned the 2020 Women's Distinguished Career Award from IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, the first time the award was presented.

IEEE Fellows are elected annually via an extremely competitive and rigorous selection process. Only a handful of accomplished individuals across the world are conferred this honor, and the competition among the most selective universities is fierce. Over the past decade, EECS has seen a number of its faculty members named IEEE Fellows for exceptional achievements in their respective fields. NTU ranks among the top three Asian universities in terms of the percentage of affiliated IEEE Fellows, comparing no less favorably with top US universities while surpassing many prestigious institutions in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and China.