R. David Middlebrook was a professor of electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He was born in England in 1929 and died in California on April 16, 2010. He is most well known in the field of power electronics and as a proponent of design-oriented circuit analysis.
He is regarded as one of the founders of the field of power electronics. He developed the averaged-switch method of analysis and other tools crucial to modern power electronics design. He was highly regarded both as a researcher and a teacher. He founded the Power Electronics Group at Caltech.
The IEEE Power Electronics Society has established the R. David Middlebrook award for “outstanding contribution in the technical field of power electronics” in his honor. Middlebrook was one of the founders of the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC).
He wrote several books including An Introduction to Junction Transistor Theory, which helped early electrical engineers devise practical applications for the transistor.
Richard S. Muller received the degree of Mechanical Engineer (with highest honor) from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey in 1955. Supported by Howard Hughes and NSF Fellowships, he earned an MS degree in Electrical Engineering in 1957, and a doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Physics in 1962 at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California. From 1955 to 1962 he was a member of the technical staff at the Hughes Aircraft Company, Culver City, California, and from 1957 to 1960, a lecturer at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He was also a lecturer at Caltech during 1961-62. In July, 1962 Dr. Muller joined the Electrical Engineering faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. His initial research and teaching on the physics of integrated-circuit devices led to collaboration with Dr. Theodore I. Kamins of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in writing Device Electronics for Integrated Circuits, first published by John Wiley & Sons in 1977, with a 2nd edition in 1986, and a 3rd edition appearing in 2002. This textbook has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Russian, and both orthodox and simplified Chinese. Dr. Muller changed his research focus in the late 1970s to the general area now known as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and he joined in 1986 with colleague Professor Richard M. White to found the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center (BSAC), an NSF/Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.
Professor Muller has been awarded: NATO and Fulbright Research Fellowships; an Alexander von Humboldt Senior-Scientist Award; the UC Berkeley Citation (1994); Stevens Institute of Technology Renaissance Award (1995); the Transducers Research Conference Career Achievement Award (1997), the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award (with Roger T. Howe, 1998) and an IEEE Millennium Medal (2000). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and has served as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. In 1990, he proposed to IEEE and ASME the creation of a MEMS technical journal, which began publication in 1991 as the IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems (IEEE/ASME JMEMS). Professor Muller has served as the JMEMS Editor-in-Chief since 1998. He is also a Trustee of the Stevens Institute of Technology, a past member of the NRC National Materials Advisory Board, a Trustee (and Secretary) of the Transducer Research Foundation, and a member of the Technical Advisory Board for several companies doing business in MEMS. Dr. Muller is presently the review Chairman for Microsystem Technologies for the Helmholtz Association(an agency reporting to the government of Germany); in 2003, he served on a similar review committee for the Government of Finland. Professor Muller is the author or co-author of more than 300 research papers and technical presentations and of 19 issued patents. More than 3,150 citations to his published research have been recorded through May, 2009.
Dr. Slobodan Ćuk was a full-time Professor of Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology until January 1, 2000. During that time, more than 30 students obtained their Ph.D. degree in Power Electronics under Dr. Ćuk’s guidance. Many of them are now leading researchers and/or Professors of Power Electronics in the U.S. and abroad.
Dr. Ćuk won a coveted IR*100 Award in 1980 from the Industrial Research Magazine for the invention of a new and patented switching converter topology and several of its extensions, which are now known as the ĆUKonverter technology. For the invention of Integrated Magnetics and expediting the development of switched-mode power converters, Dr. Ćuk obtained the prestigious 1991 Edward Longstreth Medal from the Franklin Institute, which was for the first time in its 100 years history awarded to researchers in Power Electronics. His publications include over 100 scientific papers in the Power Electronics field and a three-volume book on Advances in Switched-Mode Power Conversion.
Over a span of 20 years, Dr. Ćuk has taught a number of public and in-house courses in the United States, Europe and Far East, and gave a number of tutorial seminars at leading Power Electronics conferences throughout the world. These courses and seminars have been attended by over 4,000 Power Electronics specialists.
In 1979, Dr. Ćuk founded TESLAco with the charter to apply the basic research results developed at Caltech to practical commercial and military designs. He holds over 30 patents related to new switched-mode power conversion concepts.
He received Franklin laureate award for pioneering and expediting the development of integrated magnetics and switched-mode power conversion.
