Rate My Professor Volker Pickert

Professor Volker Pickert is the Professor of Power Electronics in the School of Engineering at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and the University of Cambridge, UK, earning his Dipl.-Ing. degree in 1994 and PhD from Newcastle University in 1997. During his studies, he gained early experience in hybrid electric vehicles at the Institute of Automotive Systems (IKA) in Aachen. After his PhD, he spent six years in industry: as an Application Engineer and later Product Manager at Semikron GmbH (1998–1999), and as Group Leader for electric power drive trains for electric and fuel cell vehicles at Volkswagen AG (1999–2003). He joined Newcastle University in 2003 as a Senior Lecturer, was promoted to Professor of Power Electronics in 2011, and headed the Electrical Power Research Group from 2012 to 2020, overseeing growth that quadrupled research income and managed a team of over 100 researchers.

Professor Pickert specializes in power electronics, propulsion, energy storage, and green and sustainable energy and transport. Possessing 25 years of experience in power electronics and electric drives, he has led over 50 funded projects, supervised over 40 PhD students, and directs the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Electric Propulsion since 2019, which trains over 50 PhD students. He served as Director of Discipline for Electrical and Electronic Engineering from 2020 to 2023 and leads the Driving the Electric Revolution Industrialisation Centre from 2025. As Editor-in-Chief of the IET Power Electronics journal, he is frequently invited as a keynote speaker and advises governments on energy and transport matters. His scholarly output includes over 244 publications, such as "Robust Wireless Power Transfer for EVs by Self-Oscillating Controlled Inverters and Identical Single-Coil Transmitting and Receiving Pads" (Energies, 2025), "A Method for Accurate Measurement of Anisotropic Thermal Conductivity of Impregnated Electrical Windings" (IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, 2025), "Medium temperature heat pipes – Applications, challenges and future direction" (Applied Thermal Engineering, 2024), and numerous contributions to IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics and other prestigious journals.