The Outstanding Dissertation Award of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University was given to Mahshid Amirabadi for the academic year of 2011-2012.

The Outstanding Dissertation Award was recently established to recognize the contributions of a Ph.D. student who has excelled in research conducted as part of their Ph.D. dissertation. Graduate students who expect to graduate by Summer 2013 were eligible for this award and nominations were accepted from the thesis advisors of graduate students. The award recipient was chosen by the departmental awards committee.

Amirabadi’s thesis advisor is Dr. Hamid Toliyat. Her dissertation focuses on a new class of power converters called “ac-link universal power converters,” in which the inputs and outputs can be dc, ac, single phase or multi-phase. Therefore, they can be employed in a wide variety of applications including Photovoltaics and wind power generation.