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Nihal Kularatna, DSc (he/him/his)

University of Waikato

Nihal Kularatna is an electronics engineer with over 50 years of contribution. He has authored ten reference books for practicing electronic engineers including two consecutive IET Electrical Measurement Series books in mesauremnts and instruemnts (1996, 2003/2008). His latest research monograph on sustainable energy and energy storage systems, titled Energy Storage Devices for Renewable Energy Systems: Rechargeable Batteries and Supercapacitors, was published by Elsevier in 2021, summarizing his applications-oriented research , supervising many PhD students at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. He was the winner of NZ Engineering Innovator of the Year 2013 Award. In 2021, he won the Postgraduate Research Supervision Staff Excellence Award. He was the first full-time CEO of the Arthur C Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies
A Fellow of the IET (London), Fellow of Engineering NZ and a Senior Member of IEEE (USA) and a graduate from the University of Ceylon, during his industrial career at the Arthur C Clarke Institute, he was a winner of Presidential Awards for Inventions-1995, the Most Outstanding Citizens Awards-1999 and a TOYP Award in 1993. In 2015, University of Waikato conferred him with a DSc degree for his thesis titled “Contributions to Power Management, Telecommunications and Telecommunications- A Three Decade Journey”.
He is currently active in research in supercapacitor applications, DC systems, power converters , transient propagation and renewable energy. He has contributed over 200 papers to learned journals and international conferences. His supercapacitor assisted (SCA) techniques based on the new SCA loss management theory (SCALoM) such as SCALDO, SCASA and SCATMA culminated numerous US, NZ and PCT patents.
Professor Kularatna is the lead in Waikato power electronics research (WaiPER) group of the University of Waikato . At IEEE conferences and industry trade shows he frequently delivers invited tutorials and workshops on SCA techniques. His hobbies are gardening and car-grooming.

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