Past President
Issa Batarseh
University of Central Florida

Issa E. Batarseh, Ph.D., is the Director of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (www.eecs.ucf.edu) and a Professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL. Dr. Batarseh is also the Director of the Florida Power Electronics Center in the School of EECS (http://floridapec.engr.ucf.edu ) at UCF. Dr. Batarseh received his Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 1990, '85 and '83, respectively. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Purdue University at Calumet from 1989 to 1990 before joining what was then UCF's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1991 as an Assistant Professor.

During his 17-plus years at UCF, Dr. Batarseh has held a wide variety of academic and administrative positions and including serving Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering and Computer Science from 1998-2003 and as Assistant Chair of ECE from 1997-1998. Since June 2003, Dr. Batarseh has been the Director of EECS, which earned more than $8 million in research funding in FY07, has more than 70 faculty members and enrolls nearly 2,000 undergraduate students and almost 500 graduate students. The School offers degrees Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science and Information Technology programs at the BS, MS and PhD levels.

Dr. Batarseh's major research area is power electronics, primarily developing high-frequency DC-DC soft-switching semiconductor power converters to improve power density, efficiency and performance. He has published more than 50 refereed journals, 200 conference papers and has 16 U.S. patents. John Wiley & Sons published Dr. Batarseh's textbook, Power Electronic Circuits, in 2003.

Dr. Batarseh is an IEEE Fellow, which is among the most prestigious awards an engineer can earn, a AAAS Fellow (American Association for the Advancement of Science) and an IEE Fellow. He has won numerous other accolades and awards during his career including the State of Florida's Davis Productivity Award for Best Invention in 2004 as well as many IEEE service, education and publication awards – including third place in the 2003 IEEE Future Energy Challenge. He also is the Web master for the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) and a member of the PELS Advisory Committee. In June 2007, he was the General Chair of the IEEE Power Electronics Specialist Conference at the Hilton in the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL, which was attended by more than 500 power electronic researchers and industry representatives from 42 countries.

Dr. Batarseh is an active member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA), currently serving as ECEDHA Secretary 2008-2009 and president elect for 2009-2010.