PELS Annual Townhall Meeting Focuses on Future Growth

Abstract

This year, the annual Townhall Meeting of the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) was an in-person event, held on 11 October 2022, as part of the IEEE Energy Conversion Congress & Expo (ECCE), at the Huntington Place, Detroit, MI, USA. It began with a 35th anniversary reception, followed by meeting and discussion in a hall. PELS President Liuchen Chang, professor emeritus, University of New Brunswick, Canada, kicked of the Townhall Meeting with a slide presentation that highlighted 35 years of growth and excellence. Since the establishment of PELS 35 years ago, thousands of volunteers have been working on the growth and excellence of our society, stated Chang. As a result, he added, today there are 11,000+ members world-wide, and 233 chapters, joint chapters, and student branch chapters in all 10 regions of IEEE ( <xref ref-type="fig" rid="fig1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Figure 1</xref> ). With growing applications of power electronics, the society has created 12 technical committees (TCs) to give a home to all power electronics professionals, noted Chang. The slides indicated that today there are 3500+ members participating in the 12 TCs, and the number continues to grow.