Ian Dobson Professor Address/E-mail Program Affiliations Courses Education Fields of Interest Publications Awards & Honors Summary >>> Extended Homepage <<<

Contact Information

2564 Engineering Hall 1415 Engineering Drive Madison, WI 53706

Tel: 608/262-2661 Fax: 608/262-1267 E-mail: dobson@engr.wisc.edu

Program Affiliations

• Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Power Systems Engineering Research Center
• Wisconsin Power Electronics Research Center

Courses

• ECE 220: Electrodynamics I
• ECE 330: Signals and Systems
• ECE 331: Introduction to Random Signal Analysis and Statistics
• ECE 332: Feedback Control Systems
• ECE 334: State Space Systems Analysis
• ECE 355: Electromechanical Energy Conversion
• ECE 427: Electric Power Systems
• ECE 717: Linear Systems
• ECE 730: Modern Probability Theory and Stochastic Processes
• ECE 731: Advanced Power System Analysis
• ECE 777: Nonlinear Dynamics, Bifurcations and Chaos
• ECE 817: Nonlinear Systems

Education

• PhD Electrical Engineering 1989, Cornell University
• BA Mathematics 1978, Cambridge University

Fields of Interest

• complex systems
• self-organized criticality
• nonlinear dynamics
• cascading failure and risk analysis
• bifurcations
• electric power system stability
• oscillations
• blackouts

Publications

See personal home page.

Selected Awards, Honors and Societies

• NSF Presidential Young Investigator
• IEEE Fellow

Summary

I am currently interested in understanding and quantifying the risk of blackouts using ideas of cascading failure and self-organized criticality from probability, physics and engineering.

My industrial research background is the simulation of switching circuits, and my doctoral thesis describes fractal structures in a chaotic oscillator. In the past I have worked on applying bifurcations to understand and avoid voltage collapse blackouts and various other engineering applications of nonlinear dynamics.

Complex and nonlinear systems with interesting instabilities, dynamics, phase transitions and variable structure abound in engineering, and I have a broad interest in applying new theory so that these systems can be better understood and their performance improved.

If you would like to find out more, please look at the papers on my personal home page.

Copyright 2008 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System Date last modified: 03-Oct-2008 Content by: dobson@engr.wisc.edu Accessibility Web services UPDATE PROFILE