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Muetze receives NSF CAREER award

Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professor Annette Muetze (15K JPG)

The National Science Foundation awarded Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professor Annette Muetze a 2005 Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER). The NSF CAREER awards, among the most prestigious given to faculty members who are just beginning their academic careers, are granted to creative projects that integrate research and education effectively.

Muetze's research holds promise for better design and optimization of traction motors. Traction motors are the workhorse system for converting electricity to motion or motion to energy. Where current is employed to create motion, chances are a traction motor is doing the work. So common are these systems that even a small gain in efficiency can result in dramatic energy savings and environmental gains. Industry continues to find new uses for traction motors and is demanding more reliability and efficiency from them under a wider range of operating conditions. New drive topologies and materials are having an impact on the design of machines and actuators. Integration of modern optimization and design techniques is urgently needed to fully take advantage of these systems.

Muetze will use her five-year, $399,000 grant to apply modern mathematical optimization techniques to finite element analysis-based design of electromechanical energy converters. Her modeling and problem formulation will exploit convex characteristics that play an important role in global optimization. Muetze will employ these techniques to create streamlined, reliable and highly efficient design, bringing forth a significant saving of expenses related to sub-optimal energy consumption of traction motors and their design methods. In addition, Muetze will integrate these modern design techniques into the on-campus and off-campus power-engineering education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Her methodology will include development of web-based learning tools, literature-based learning and small-group based projects. Muetze earned her PhD from Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany in 2004 and joined the College of Engineering faculty the same year.

Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu

Date last modified: 25-May-2005
Date created: 25-May-2005

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