- Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015
- B.S., Tsinghua University, 2009
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment
Princeton Power Electronics Lab's research aims at developing fundamental and novel power electronics solutions to enable and support a wide range of applications. Heading towards a greener, smarter, and highly interconnected future, it is time for us to replace the bulky and lossy “power cabinets” and “bricks” with well-optimized and highly-integrated “power sticks” and “chips” that will make future electronic systems much smaller, sustainable, and more capable.
There are exciting opportunities and challenges in pushing the performance boundary of power electronics. Advances are enabled by new architectures and design concepts, and supported by rapid developments in power semiconductor devices, passive components and fabrication techniques that can greatly change the design space. Optimally designed high frequency power electronics leveraging these state-of-the-art techniques promises order-of-magnitude higher power density. However, circuit timing and control, parasitics, magnetics, and thermal management all pose difficulties in high frequency designs. Both existing and entirely new applications – ranging from mW-scale energy harvesting circuits in portable devices, to kW or MW systems in electric vehicles, data centers, and renewable integration – require specialized power electronics which either present substantial room for improvement, or for which there is as yet no adequate solution.
Professor Chen received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2015, and received his B.S. from Tsinghua University in 2009. Before joining Princeton University, he was a postdoctoral associate at MIT RLE, doing research on advanced power conversion architecture and power magnetics. He is the recipient of an IEEE Transaction First Prize Paper Award, the Chorafas Foundation Award for outstanding Ph.D. thesis, the E.E. Landsman Fellowship, the First Prize Award in IEEE ECCE Student Demo Competition, and an Outstanding Reviewer Award from IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. He has three patents issued and has a few patents pending.
- M. Liu, M. Chen, “Dual-Band Wireless Power Transfer with Reactance Steering Network and Reconfigurable Receivers,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, accepted.
- M. Chen, S. Chakraborty, and D. J. Perreault, “Multitrack Power Factor Correction Architecture,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 2454-2466, March, 2019
- M. Chen, K. K. Afridi, S. Chakraborty, and D. J. Perreault, “Multitrack Power Conversion Architecture,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol.32, no.1, pp. 325-340, January, 2017.
- M. Chen, M. Araghchini, K. K. Afridi, J. H. Lang, C. R. Sullivan, and D. J. Perreault, “A Systematic Approach to Modeling Impedances and Current Distribution in Planar Magnetics,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol.31, no.1, pp. 560-580, January, 2016.
- M. Chen, K. K. Afridi, and D. J. Perreault, “Stacked Switched Capacitor Energy Buffer Architecture,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol.28, no.11, pp. 5183-5195, November, 2013.
Honors and Awards:
- NSF CAREER Award, 2019
- 1st Place, Princeton Keller Center Innovation Forum, 2019
- Princeton Engineering Commendation List for Outstanding Teaching, 2019
- IEEE Power Electronics Transactions Prize Paper Award, 2nd Place, 2018
- IEEE Power Electronics Transactions Prize Paper Award, 1st Place, 2017
- Doctoral Thesis Award, Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation, MIT, 2016