The Institute of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology welcomes Prof Dr Jakub Kučka for the summer semester 2025. Mr Kučka succeeds Prof Böcker as Head of the Department of Power Electronics and Electric Drive Systems. We are very pleased that a worthy successor has been found for the department with the third highest level of funding at the Institute, who will continue to make optimum use of the department's excellent technical equipment in the future. In terms of teaching, he will start in the summer semester with "Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering B" - further lectures will be fine-tuned until then. We would like to take this opportunity to briefly introduce Mr Kučka:
Mr Kučka - born in 1991 - studied Power Engineering and Management at the Technical University of Prague and graduated in 2014. He completed his doctorate with distinction in 2019 with the topic "Quasi-Two-Level PWM Operation for Modular Multilevel Converters: Implementation, Analysis, and Application to Medium-Voltage Motor Drives" at Leibniz Universität Hannover. He was honoured with the "Semikron Young Engineer Award" in 2021 for his contributions to quasi-two-level operation for modular multilevel converters. He also received the "Outstanding Young EPE Member Award" for his research work at the EPE conference in 2020. After completing his doctorate, he went to the renowned EPFL Institute for Power Electronics in Lausanne for 21 months. There he significantly expanded the focus of his research and gained a lot of experience in the development of medium-voltage prototypes, for example, and explored other topics in power electronics such as resonant converters and IGCTs. In November 2021, he moved to "Large Drive Applications, Siemens AG" in Erlangen to continue his career in industry as an R&D developer, as it was of great importance for him as a researcher in an applied science to understand the practical needs and challenges of industrial work. Parallel to his industrial work, he has been gaining teaching experience at Leibniz Universität Hannover since September 2023 with a teaching assignment on the topic of "Controlled grid converters".
In his application, Mr Kučka wrote: "In view of the developments in the energy sector, power electronics will continue to play a decisive role for a sustainable future in the long term. I am firmly convinced that this position will enable me to tackle the challenges ahead through excellent research and at the same time trainee new experts in the field." The appointment committee agreed with this conviction and we look forward to his valuable contribution to the Faculty and the Institute.
