On May. 20th ,2009, at the invitation of the College of Electrical Engineering, Prof. Jose Rodgriguez, the Rector of the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Maria , delivered a lecture named "Model Predictive Control - a Simple and Powerful Method to Control Power Converters" in the lecture hall in Electrical Engineering Building. In the lecture , he mainly talked about the details of Finite Control Set Model Predictive Control (FCS-MPC) and its application in Power converter. The lecture received a warm welcome and a lot of praise among teachers and students present.
Prof. José Rodríguez (M'81-SM'94) received the Engineer degree from the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaíso, Chile, in 1977, and the Dr.-Ing. degree from the University of Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany, in 1985, both in electrical engineering. Since 1977, he has been with the Department of Electronics Engineering, University Técnica Federico Santa María, where he is currently a Professor. From 2001 to 2004, he was the Director of the Department of Electronics Engineering. From 2004 to 2005, he served as Vice Rector of academic affairs, and since 2005, he has been the Rector of the university. During his sabbatical leave in 1996, he was responsible for the Mining Division, Siemens Corporation, Santiago, Chile. He has extensive consulting experience in the mining industry, particularly in the application of large drives such as cycloconverter-fed synchronous motors for SAG mills, high-power conveyors, and controlled ac drives for shovels and power quality issues. He has directed more than 40 R&D projects in the field of industrial electronics. He has coauthored more than 250 journal and conference proceeding papers and contributed one book chapter. His research group has been recognized as one of the two centers of excellence in engineering in Chile from 2005 to 2008. His main research interests include multilevel inverters, new converter topologies, and adjustable-speed drives. Prof. Rodríguez has been an active Associate Editor for the IEEE Power Electronics and IEEE Industrial Electronics Societies since 2002. He has served as Guest Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics in five instances [Special Sections on Matrix Converters (2002), Multilevel Inverters (2002), Modern Rectifiers (2005), High Power Drives (2007) and Predictive Control of Power Converters and Drives (2008)].
