2017 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference and Expo (ITEC’17)

Omer C. Onar
General Chair, ITEC’17

 

It is with great pleasure to welcome the industry, academia, government agencies, and the public to the 2017 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference and Expo (ITEC’17).  In this 6th year of the conference, ITEC keeps helping the industry transition from non-electric to more and all electric forms of transportation including land, sea, air, and rail vehicles covering the electrification of both propulsion and non-propulsion systems and components. Education, health, employment, and quality of living are all important in our lives but transportation is a key enabler to achieve any and each of these. Our lives all depend on high quality, fast, economic, and environmental friendly transportation. ITEC is a unique event that brings experts together to explore the recent advancements, opportunities, and challenges in transportation electrification.

The 2017 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference and Expo will be held on June 22-24 at Navy Pier in Chicago, IL. Navy Pier is one of the most visited landmarks in Chicago with breathtaking views of Lake Michigan. In the past 5 years, ITEC has been held in the heart of the auto industry in the Detroit metro area. This is the first year that ITEC is leaving Detroit to explore the advancements and needs in the other industry segments including rail, aerospace, off-road and heavy-duty vehicles and the tier-1 and 2 manufacturers and suppliers in the region while the other core ITEC areas remain equally important.

ITEC’17 offers an excellent conference program and exhibition focused on the needs of the industry. This year we will have 12 very diverse, top-notch keynote speakers who are the leading experts in the industry. Additionally, ITEC’17 offers timely and highly relevant short courses, tutorials, and industry panel sessions. Furthermore, we will have a very large industry exhibition focused on systems, subsystems, and components for transportation systems covering batteries, prototyping and testing equipment, power electronic converters including traction drive and charging systems, design and development examples of industry products, and even a vehicle architecture development platform.

The program also includes about 150 high-quality technical paper presentations. This year, the organizing committee added more technical tracks to the conference program. The first of these tracks is Thermal Management, Packaging, and Optimization of Traction Drive Systems. Nowadays in traction drive inverters, greatest accomplishments in specific power, power density, volume, and cost have been achieved through thermal management, materials, and packaging of the systems while topological achievements have always been of great interest to ITEC. Connected and autonomous vehicles, smart mobility, and vehicle cyber security are the other emerging topics in our era of transportation electrification that will be covered at ITEC’17.  

This year, we will be hosting a pre-conference welcome reception on June 21, 2017 with a vehicle display event from Toyota where they will display, drive, and present the world’s first commercially available fuel cell electric vehicle, the Toyota Mirai.  The vehicle display event will take place at the Herman Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology campus (3124 S. Federal St. Chicago, IL 60616) starting at 5.30pm.  The welcome reception with vehicle display event is open to all ITEC attendees and their guests.

We look forward to welcoming you at ITEC’17 on June 22-24 at Navy Pier, Chicago, IL to discuss and learn more about the current status, new progress, emerging technologies, and future trends in transportation electrification and to collaborate with your fellow piers who are working on this paradigm shift of our century. We are enthusiastically looking forward to meeting you at ITEC and hope you have a memorable experience.

 

 

 

Omer C. Onar received his Ph.D. degree from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Electrical Engineering, in July 2010, Chicago, IL. In July 2010, he received the Alvin M. Weinberg Fellowship at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where he joined the Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Group. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he has been working on advanced power electronics and electric drives, renewable energies, energy storage systems, wireless power transfer systems, and smart grids. He is an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification and the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics.