National Academy of Engineering selects three ECE associates as members

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected three associates of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as members. Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer and honors outstanding contributions to research, practice or education.

Vladimir Blasko, an ECE adjunct professor, was selected in February 2023 for contributions to the theory and practice of regenerative electrical drives and grid-tied converters.

Blasko’s primary research interests include power electronics, modern AC drives, distributed energy systems, intelligent power management and applied modern control theory and technology.

At the beginning of his career he worked for the Research Institute of the Koncar Company, in Zagreb, Croatia, before joining Rockwell Automation-The Allen Bradley Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the Otis Elevator Company, he initiated and led the development of a new generation of high-performance regenerative drives. He then became a senior fellow at the United Technologies Research Center, setting the research direction, strategies and roadmaps for the center as well as setting up research collaborations with universities and other organizations. Currently, he is a senior manager for the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, based in Stratford, Connecticut.

Hao Huang, also an ECE adjunct professor, was selected as part of the 2021 class of NAE members. He was cited for contributions to advances in electric machines and power electronics technologies for aerospace electrical systems.

Huang spent his career in the aviation and transportation industry, focusing on power generation, conversion, and distribution/control for advanced aircraft and land vehicles. He served as director of engineering, chief scientist and technology chief at Smiths Aerospace, later GE Aviation, from 2001 until his retirement in 2020. In that time, he made major advances in developing systems for electric aircraft and hybrid electric propulsion, receiving over 50 patents with several dozen more still pending. After retirement, he decided the best way to serve aerospace engineering was through education, and began teaching at the university level.

UW-Madison alumnus Longya Xu (MSECE ’86, PhDECE ’90) was selected for contributions to high-performance electric machines and variable-speed drives for aerospace and wind turbines.

Xu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at The Ohio State University, is the co-founder and director (retired) of the Center for High Performance Power Electronics. During the early part of his career in China, Xu worked on 150kvA synchronous machine design, manufacturing and testing for mobile power stations in China. Between 1982 and 1984 he worked as a researcher on linear machines at the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Academia Sinica. In 1990, he joined the faculty of Ohio State. He has served as a consultant to companies including Honeywell, Boeing, General Electric, Raytheon, Ford, General Motors and many others.

Newly elected fellows will be formally inducted during NAE’s annual meeting in October 2023.