RCRE People

My research focuses on improving reliability, safety, and sustainability of power electronic systems that enables modern energy technologies, including electric vehicles, renewable energy system, battery energy storage, and data center power infrastructure. These electronic system control how electrical energy is converted, delivered, and protected, and their reliability is critical for ensuring safe operation of large-scale energy and electrification systems.

My work combines device physics, packaging integration, reliability testing, and data-driven monitoring to understand failure mechanisms and develop next-generation reliable power electronic systems. Through this research, we aim to ensure our key energy infrastructures, from electric vehicle to renewable energy and battery systems, can operate safely and efficiently over long service lifetimes.

I am currently an Assistant Professor with the PolyU, IEEE Senior Member, Academic Advisory Group Member of the International Energy Agency (IEA) 4E program power electronics platform. I am also one of the co-funder of the ReliaPE Aps, which is a spin-off providing reliability assessment tools for power electronics.

My group is recruiting PhD, MPhi, and Postdoc. The applicants can send your CV and a research proposal to yi-ee.zhang@polyu.edu.hk.

Academic Award

• Best Special Session Organizer for the Conference IEEE IPEMC 2024 – ECCE Asia, 5.2024
• The First Place Prize Paper Award for 2020 in the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (first and corresponding author), 2021
• IEEE PELS Ph.D. Thesis Award in IEEE Power Electronics Society, 2020
• DFF International Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Danish Council for Independent Research, 2020
• IEEE IES Student & Young Professionals Paper Assistance (IES-SYPA), 2017
• IEEE PELS Student Paper Travel Grant, IEEE Energy Conversion Congress & Exposition (ECCE), 2017
• Outstanding Graduate, Harbin Institute of Technology, 2014

Services to Professional Bodies

• Senior Member of IEEE
• Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
• Technical Council Committee, IEEE Transportation Electrification Council – Railway Electrification Committee, 2024 – present
• Academic Advisory Group Member, International Energy Agency (IEA) 4E Program – Power Electronic Conversion Technology Platform, 2024-2029
• Working Group Voting Member, IEEE Standard P1413 Reliability Prediction, 2023 – present
• International Conference Tutorial or Invited Speech: APEC 2025, ECCE Europe 2024, IPEMC 2024 ECCE Asia 2024, PLECS Conference 2024, SIEMENS Realize Live Europe 2024, SET and ECPE Reliability Round Table 2023.
• Associate Editor: IET Power Electronics (2024-2026), Chinese Journal of Electrical Engineering (2024-2026), Elsevier’s e-Prime Journal (Senior Editor 2021-present), Applied Sciences (2023-present)
• Guest Associate Editor: IEEE Trans. Power Electronics on the topic of “Advancing PE reliability,” (2023-2024), IET Electric Power Applications (2024), Applied Science (2024), Elsevier’s e-Prime (2023), CMP Journal of Electrical Engineering (2023).
• Member, IEC Young Professional Group of Nordic Countries, 2021

Industrial collaborations

• Siemens AG, on the topic of thermal transient measurement of power semiconductors
• Infineon AG, on the topic of a new standard high-power module
• Vestas Wind Systems A/S, on the topic of reliability of wind power converter
• Nexperia, on the topic of SiC MOSFETs
• Ingeteam, on the topic of a new standard high-power module
• UTRC, on the topic of reliability of electrical aircraft
• Hyosung Korea, on the topic of early failure of modular multilevel converters
• Danfoss, on the topic of leveraging AI to advance motor drive power converters
• Hitachi Energy (previous ABB), on the topic of monitoring the health status of modular multilevel converters

Selected Publications (* is the corresponding author)

1. Y. Liao, and Y. Zhang*. "Rethinking Model-based Fault Detection: Uncertainties, Risks, and Optimization based on a Multilevel Converter Case Study." IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (2024).
2. Y. Zhang*, Y Zhang, V H Wong, S Kalker, A Caruso, L Ruppert, F Iannuzzo, and R. W. de Doncker. "Figures-of-merit study for thermal transient measurement of SiC MOSFETs." IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (2024).
3. Y. Zhang*, A Evgrafov, S Zhao, S Kalker, and R. W. De Doncker. "A Sparsity-Promoting Time Domain Evaluation Method for Thermal Transient Measurement of Power Semiconductors." IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (2024). (Second Place Prize Paper Award)
4. Y. Zhang*, Y Zhang, Z Xu, Z Wang, V H Wong, Z Lu, and A Caruso. "Guideline for reproducible SiC MOSFET thermal characterization based on source-drain voltage." IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications 60, no. 3 (2024): 4229-4238. (Second Place Prize Paper Award)
5. H. Xia, Y. Zhang*, M. Chen, D. Luo, W. Lai, and H. Wang. "Capacitor Parameter Estimation based on Wavelet Transform and Convolution Neural Network." IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (2024).
6. Y. Zhang*, Y Xu, and F Blaabjerg. "Surrogate models for power electronic systems applying machine learning techniques." In Control of Power Electronic Converters and Systems: Volume 4, pp. 333-352. Academic Press, 2024.
7. Y. Zhang*, Y Zhang, and H Wang. "gEOL: A gradient-based end-of-life criterion for power semiconductor modules." IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics 39, no. 3 (2023): 2927-2931.
8. X. Zhang, Y. Zhang*, D Zhou, X Wu, and H Wang. "Computationally Efficient Dynamic Thermal Modeling Based on Dictionary Learning Reconstruction." IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics 38, no. 12 (2023): 15152-15156.
9. Y. Zhang*, H Wang, Z Wang, F Blaabjerg, and M Saeedifard. "Mission profile-based system-level reliability prediction method for modular multilevel converters." IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics 35, no. 7 (2019): 6916-6930. (First Place Prize Paper Award)

• Bachelor of Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology
• Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology
• Doctor of Philosophy, Aalborg University