Our New Esteemed Professor: David G. Dorrell

Prof. David G. Dorrell has recently joined the Automation Engineering, University of Turku. He was born in St. Helens, U.K. He received the B.Eng. degree (Hons) from the University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K., in 1988, the M.Sc. degree from the University of Bradford, Bradford, U.K., in 1989, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., in 1993.

He is currently a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Automation Engineering, University of Turku. Previously he was a Distinguished Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He was also a Professor of Electrical Machines at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Durban, South Africa, from 2015 to 2020, and the Director of the EPPEI Specialization Centre in HVDC and FACTS, UKZN, from 2016 to 2020. He has held positions with the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, U.K.; University of Reading, Reading, U.K.; University of Glasgow, Glasgow, U.K.; and University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia. He has worked in industry and carried out several industrial consultancies.

His research interests cover electrical machines, renewable energy, and power systems. Dr. Dorrell is a Chartered Engineer in the UK and a Fellow of IET. In 2019, he was elevated to Fellow of the IEEE, USA, with a citation “for contributions to time efficient design methodology of rotating electrical machines”. He has authored or co-authored over 170 journal papers mostly in IEEE Transactions and journals and has over 15000 citations on Google Scholar. In 1996, he was awarded the IEE (now IET) Crompton Premium for papers based on his PhD work, and he has several Prizes from the IEEE for papers presented at IEEE conferences. He has supervised or co-supervised 23 PhD students to completion.

Much of his work is aimed at improving the performance of electrical systems, whether it be electrical machines or power systems. This will help the transition to a non-fossil fuel economy, with renewable energy generation, smart grid utilization and energy storage, and electric transportation.

Prof. Dr. Dorrell has had visiting scholar positions in Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, and China, and has visited many other countries. He has many international collaborations and enjoys travelling.

Past notable projects include:

• The design of induction and brushless permanent magnet motors, latterly for electric vehicles includes axial flux machines and more novel machines.
• Soft starting of induction motors where the supply is weak and cannot cope with high transient starting current.
• Cyber security in grids and power system simulation with students at the EPPEI centre at the University of Kwazulu-Natal.
• Ongoing interest in energy from sea waves with several PhD and other projects working on various aspects of wave energy.
• Electric vehicle technology including drive motor design, wireless charging, use of supercapacitors, and battery-swap stations.