Khurram Afridi is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. He received the BS degree in electrical engineering from Caltech (1989), and SM (1992) and PhD (1998) degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. His research interests are in power electronics and energy systems incorporating power electronic controls. Prior to joining Cornell, he was an Assistant Professor and the Goh Faculty Fellow at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder (2014-2018), a visiting faculty at MIT's EECS Department (2009-2014), and the Chief Operating Officer (2000-2010) and Chief Technology Officer (1997-2000) of Techlogix. From 2004 to 2008 he led the development of LUMS School of Science and Engineering (SSE) as Project Director. He has also worked for JPL, Lutron, Philips, and Schlumberger. He is a guest editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, a distinguished lecturer of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, and was the general chair for the IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL) 2024, the Technical Program Committee (TPC) co-chair for the IEEE Workshop on Emerging Technologies: Wireless Power (WoW) 2021, the TPC co-chair for the IEEE Workshop on Wide Bandgap Power Devices and Applications (WiPDA) 2018, and the TPC chair for the IEEE Wireless Power Transfer Conference (WPTC) 2015. He received the Carnation Merit Award from Caltech (1988), the BMW Scientific Award from BMW AG (1999), the Werner-von-Siemens Chair for Power Electronics from LUMS SSE (2008), the Dean's Professional Progress Award from CU Boulder (2015), the ECEE Department Outstanding Overall Performance Award from CU Boulder (2016), the National Science Foundation CAREER Award from NSF (2016), the Engineering Research Excellence Award from Cornell (2021), and the Michael Tien ’72 Excellence in Teaching Award from Cornell (2023). He is co-author of eight IEEE prize papers.
Professor Afridi's primary research interest is in high frequency power electronics and energy systems incorporating power electronic controls as a means to efficiently harness, store, process, transmit, distribute and use energy. While his work across this entire energy chain is centered on the design of advanced power electronic converters, his research also includes solutions at the system and component level that draw upon his broad academic and industrial experience and leverage collaborations with faculty members in allied disciplines. The vision of his high frequency power electronics research group is to develop electronic energy conversion technologies that are ultra efficient, extremely compact, more reliable, highly intelligent, less expensive, and enable the development of next-generation energy systems incorporating power electronic controls. He strives to achieve this vision through innovations in system architectures, circuit topologies and control appropriate for high frequency power electronics.
Circuits and Electronics, Power Electronics, and Advanced Power Electronics
Eight projects have been selected from the Fall 2023 application cycle to receive Ignite Innovation Acceleration grants. The grants are designed to help project teams pursue licensing, form startups... Read more about Center for Technology Licensing program continues to fund early-stage Cornell lab innovations
Is the best way to charge electric vehicles not to plug them in at all? ECE Associate Professor Khurram Afridi speaks about his research as part of Cornell Engineering Week on The Academic Minute, a project of WAMC public radio. Read more about Khurram Afridi appears on WAMC's The Academic Minute
Cornell ECE associate professor Khurram Afridi was invited by the journal Nature Electronics to write a comment article related to the area of electrified transportation. The print version of this article will appear in the February 2022 issue of Nature Electronics. Read more about Afridi's comment on the future of electric vehicles published by Nature Electronics
