Program

Power electronics is a foundational technology of electrification, enabling renewable energy, electric mobility, battery storage, data centers, hydrogen systems, industrial drives, and electrified buildings. Traditionally, progress has been measured through efficiency, power density, cost, reliability, and control performance. While these metrics remain essential, the scale of electrification demands a broader perspective: how can power electronic systems be designed for sustainability across their entire life cycle?

This keynote explores the transition from efficiency-centered to life-cycle-aware and circular design, linking mission profiles and environmental conditions with electrical and thermal design, reliability and ageing, life-cycle assessment, and circularity. Particular attention is given to harsh and arid environments, where high temperatures, intense irradiance, dust, and thermal cycling accelerate the degradation of EV chargers, PV inverters, batteries, semiconductor devices, and cooling systems, directly affecting lifetime, replacement needs, and environmental impact.

The keynote will also discuss how digital twins, physics-informed degradation models, condition monitoring, remaining-useful-life estimation, and digital product passports can enable systems designed for longer life, maintenance, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling. The next frontier of power electronics is therefore not only higher efficiency and power density, but achieving performance, reliability, resilience, and minimum life-cycle impact simultaneously.

Dr. Sertac Bayhan is the Research Director of the Energy Center at Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar, where he also holds a joint appointment as Professor in the College of Science and Engineering. He is also a Professor at Gazi University, Türkiye (on sabbatical leave).

His research focuses on power electronics, smart grids, renewable energy systems, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, microgrids, energy storage, digital twins, artificial intelligence for energy systems, and resilient power networks. Throughout his career, he has successfully led more than 20 nationally and internationally funded research projects with total funding exceeding USD 20 million, while fostering strong collaborations with academia, industry, and government organizations.

Dr. Bayhan is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Edgeon Technologies, where he has led the development and commercialization of advanced power electronics and grid-edge technologies. He has authored over 300 scientific publications, including more than 120 journal papers, over 200 conference papers, four books, and numerous book chapters. He is also an inventor of more than 15 U.S. patents in advanced power electronics, electric vehicle charging technologies, and intelligent energy management systems.

Dr. Bayhan serves as an Associate Editor for several leading IEEE journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society, and IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics. He is the Founder and Chair of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Qatar Chapter and currently serves as the General Chair of IECON 2026, the flagship annual conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.

Electrifying hard-to-abate industries opens a new frontier for power electronics, with industrial processes placing distinctive demands on how electrical energy is converted and delivered. This keynote explores emerging applications in chemicals, metals, and other energy-intensive sectors, with particular emphasis on direct electrification through high-temperature electric heating, plasma processes, and electrochemical conversion. Selected examples illustrate the resulting requirements for converter architectures, efficiency, and dynamic performance. An interdisciplinary perspective connecting power electronics with electrochemistry, plasma physics, materials science, and process engineering helps translate these application needs into new directions for power converter research and development.

Jonas Huber is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at ETH Zürich, where he leads the Power Electronics and Drive Systems Laboratory. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from ETH Zürich in 2012 and 2016, respectively. After working as a Research Assistant and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Power Electronic Systems Laboratory of ETH Zürich, he joined ABB Switzerland in 2017, developing high-power DC–DC converter systems for traction applications. He returned to ETH Zürich as a Senior Researcher in 2020 and led the Advanced Mechatronic Systems Group from 2024 to 2026, before taking up his current position.

His research focuses on compact, efficient, and highly dynamic power converters, emerging applications of power electronics, and the life-cycle environmental impacts of energy conversion systems. He has authored or coauthored more than 90 journal and conference publications and is an inventor or coinventor of more than 15 patents. He has also delivered more than 15 tutorials at major international conferences.

The expanding range of renewable energy sources, battery technologies, and DC systems demands power electronic interfaces that operate efficiently across substantial variations in voltage and power. Meeting these requirements calls for advances in converter topologies, power-processing architectures, modulation, and control.

Drawing on recent research, this keynote explores complementary approaches to advanced DC–DC conversion. High step-up converters with wide voltage gain ranges are examined, highlighting how topology morphing control extends operating flexibility while maintaining favorable conversion conditions. Partial-power processing is discussed as an approach to reducing converter ratings and losses by actively converting only a fraction of the transferred power where application requirements permit.

The keynote also addresses performance optimization through adaptive modulation and control. Experimentally validated examples illustrate the opportunities and trade-offs among operating range, efficiency, component stress, and control complexity. The presentation offers practical insights into selecting and combining these approaches to develop flexible, efficient DC–DC interfaces for emerging energy systems.

Andrii Chub is a Senior Researcher with the Power Electronics Group, Department of Electrical Power Engineering and Mechatronics, Tallinn University of Technology. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electronic Systems from Chernihiv State Technological University, Chernihiv, Ukraine, in 2008 and 2009, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia, in 2016. He was a Visiting Research Fellow with Kiel University in 2017 and a Postdoctoral Researcher with Federico Santa Maria Technical University from 2018 to 2019.

He has co-authored over 300 articles and several book chapters on power electronics and applications and holds several patents and utility models. His research interests include advanced DC–DC converter topologies, renewable energy conversion systems, energy-efficient buildings, reliability, and fault-tolerance of power electronic converters.

He is the Chair of the IEEE Estonia Section and an Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics.