ANNUAL REPORT - The Petroleum Institute

The Petroleum Institute | Annual Report - Academic Year 2011 - 2012
program that provides a world-class education
and research in electrical engineering through
focused activities and the excellence of its
faculty, staff, graduates, and facilities.
III. Highlights for the
Academic Year 2011 – 12
New Faculty and Staff
Dr. Igor Boiko joined the PI in September 2011 as
an Associate Professor.
He received his D.Sc.
and PhD Degrees from
Tula State University,
Russia in 2009 and
1990 respectively. In
1998 he started working
in the Canadian petro-chemical industry in the
area of distributed control systems and process
control. He developed a number of innovative
control applications successfully used in the
industry, among which the most important are
the adaptive control system for the sulphur
recovery process, and modified relay feedback
test used in controller tuning software. Dr.
Boiko also led the design of control systems
on Canadian mega-projects such as Syncrude
UE-1 and Shell Albian Sands. At the University
of Calgary he conducted research in the area
of discontinuous control and sliding mode
control in particular, and in process control. He
developed a novel frequency-domain theory
of discontinuous control systems, frequencydomain
methods of analysis and a design for
sliding-mode control systems, which became
the subject of his D.Sc. dissertation. Dr. Boiko
has over 100 publications to his credit and is a
Senior Member of IEEE and a member of IEEE
Technical Committee on Variable Structure
and Sliding Mode Control.
Dr. Khalifa Hasan Al Hosani joined the the PI as
an Assistant Professor in
September 2011. As part
of his PhD dissertation
(Ohio State University,
2011), he researched
ways to reduce
chattering or ripple
existing in most modern power electronics in
general and power converters in particular,
using sliding mode control and harmonics
cancellation techniques. Dr. Khalifa’s paper
on multiphase power boost converters with
sliding mode was selected as the best student
paper finalist in the IEEE Multi-conference on
systems and control held in Saint Petersburg,
Russia (2009). His research interests include
nonlinear control, sliding mode control,
control of power electronics, power system
stability and control, renewable energy system
modeling and control, smart gird, micro-grid,
and distributed generation, application of
control theory to quantum mechanical systems,
and nuclear power waste management.
Dr. Cedric Caruana joined the PI as a Visiting
Assistant Professor
in October 2011. Dr.
Caruana received his
PhD from the University
of Nottingham, UK in
2004 on the sensorless
control of AC drives. He
is a member of the IET
and the IEEE. His research interests include
the control of electrical drives, alternative
energy conversion and network integration,
microgrids, electrical machines and industrial
energy efficiency. Dr. Caruana has authored
numerous papers presented in international
conferences and in journals.
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