Ian P. Brown

Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Ian Brown is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Ian has a Ph.D. and M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also received a B.S. in engineering from Swarthmore College. Prior to joining the Illinois Institute of Technology he was with A.O. Smith's Corporate Technology Center.

His main research interests are in the areas of high performance electrical machines, electric drives, and power electronics.

• Design of high performance electric machines

  • Rapid electromagnetic and thermal analysis and optimization
  • Interior permanent magnet and wound field synchronous and induction machines
  • Range of applications including electric vehicle traction motors, high efficiency compressors, generators, etc.
  • Design of electric machines for sensorless control

• Advanced electric drive control techniques

  • Model predictive control (MPC)
  • Higher order electric machine models
  • Sensorless control algorithms
  • Flexible rapid control prototyping DSP control boards

• Power electronics

  • Hybrid silicon and wide band gap (WBG) power electronics
  • Rapid transient DC-DC converters

Seeking a PhD student with experience in electric machine design
I am seeking a qualified PhD student who has a background in electric machine design to work on a Dept. of Energy funded project designing high performance wound field synchronous machines and hybrid excitation machines for electric vehicle traction. Ideal candidates will have designed and prototyped machines previously and have experience with electromagnetic finite element analysis.