This proposal provides NSF travel support for 20 students attending the 7th IEEE Vehicular Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC 2011), to be held in Chicago, Illinois, September 6-9, 2011. The IEEE VPPC is the flagship conference of IEEE in the areas of vehicle power and propulsion. The VPPC 2011 is co-sponsored by IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) and IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS). This year the conference will feature the theme of powering sustainable transportation.
With about 500 participants, the 2011 IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC’11) contributed to the enhancement and improvement of scientific and engineering activities; by bringing together individuals from academia, industry and the government to discuss and exchange ideas in the fields of sustainable transportation systems, electric, hybrid electric, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, as well as air, space, sea and undersea vehicles. The VPPC’11 is co-sponsored by IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) and IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS). Conference Tracks include (1) Electronics, Power Electronics, and Motor Drives; (2) Electric Machines; (3) Electric and Hybrid Electric Vehicles; (4) Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles, Smart Grid, and Electrical Infrastructure; (5) Energy Storage; (6) Fuel Cell and Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicles; (7) Land Vehicles; (8) Sea, Undersea, Air, and Space Vehicles; (9) Mechanical, Hydraulic, and Pneumatic Systems; (10) Modeling, Simulation, Emissions, and Control, and Special Sessions. The main goal of NSF support was to take concrete steps to encourage student participation in the conference. This is of significant importance to our nation as automotive industry is going through major restructuring to introduce advanced electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A merit-based student selection criterion is adopted to select students from a variety of disciplines, from Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Architecture Engineering with diverse ethnic backgrounds. The NSF support enhanced participation of graduate and undergraduate students and provided an opportunity to these students to contribute to the conference, present their papers, and interact with experts from academia and industry leaders in the field. Through NSF support, this conference provided additional outreach opportunities to attract more minority and female students into the strategic field of sustainable transportation systems. The VPPC’11 provided a forum for powering sustainable transportation systems through the developments and applications of hybrid electric, plug-in hybrid electric and battery powered and propelled vehicles, which is the intellectual focus of this conference. This conference provided high quality integrated education and research to meet the emerging workforce and educational needs of the U.S. automotive industry. Its broader impacts include comprehensive benefits for our society and nation by accelerating deployment of environmentally-friendly hybrid electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles research and development; training of workforce; and participation of underrepresented groups in vehicular power engineering, a rapidly evolving area faced with international competition. The technical program consisted of 30 oral technical sessions and 2 poster sessions. The conference featured four half-day educational short courses, which were of great interest to the audience. The program also included five keynote presentations, four state-of-the-art tutorials and 11 panel discussions. There were 49 panelists in panel discussions; among them 39 panelists were industry leaders. In addition, industry participation is enhanced through special presentation only sessions and exhibits in addition to numerous papers and panel presentations. Students had the opportunity of contributing to contemporary discussions to generate new research ideas, and interact with hybrid vehicle industry leaders to learn the latest developments and technology challenging issues. In addition to the enhancement and improvement of scientific and engineering activities, this activity, in turn led to enhancement of the educational activities through four half-day tutorials and four educational short courses. Final accepted and presented conference papers are included in IEEE Xplore.
