Biography

Roberto Petrella (Member, IEEE) was born in Pescara, Italy, in 1971. He received the master’s (Hons.) and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the University of L’Aquila, Italy, in 1996 and 2001, respectively.

He is Associate Professor with the University of Udine, Italy, dealing with power electronic converters, electrical machines and drives.

Since September 2021, he is also with Silicon Austria Labs GmbH as a part-time Staff Scientist. He is the Co-Founder of Koala Electronics s.r.l., a spin-off of the University of Udine.

He has coauthored about 100 technical papers and one international patent. His main research interests include advanced modeling and control of power electronic converters and electrical drives, high-frequency resonant converters, multi-phase and multi-level converters and related modulation strategies, power electronic converters and drives for electric/hybrid vehicles, renewable-energy generation systems, and steel industry (medium voltage high power).

He received two prize papers from the Industrial Drives Committee of the IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition, in 2009 and 2017, and one Outstanding Presentation Award from the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference, in 2014. He was a Plenary Speaker at the IEEE International Electric Machines and Drives Conference, Chicago, IL, USA, in 2013. He was involved in the organization of several international conferences as the track co-chair, the chairman, a reviewer, and a member of the organizing committee. He served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, from 2017 to 2021.