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UWEE Welcomes Dr. Kai Strunz

June 1, 2002

The Electric Engineering faculty is pleased to welcome Kai Strunz, who arrived in April, as its most recent Assistant Professor. We were able to compete successfully with the delights of Paris in persuading him to cast his future with the department and, in particular, with the Energy Group. We hope that any of you who have not yet met him with seek him out in room 215J, his EE office, and on his Web page athttp://www.ee.washington.edu/people/faculty/strunz_kai/.

For the last 5 years Kai was with the national French electrical utility, Electricit� de France (EDF), in Paris. During that time, he was pursuing his PhD at the University of Saarland in Saarbr�cken Germany, which he completed this past September. By then he had agreed to join our faculty but the details of immigration delayed his arrival until last month.

Kai’s expertise is in developing and implementing digital simulation techniques for large dynamic systems where the smooth dynamics are disrupted by switching and other discontinuous events. While such phenomena occur in many types of systems, his experience has been with electric power systems where recent technology has introduced rapid switching for control purposes using digital devices. These devices have, in turn, introduced transients that cannot be reliably simulated on large systems in real time using traditional techniques. His work at EDF as well as his PhD research resulted in simulation systems to successfully study these dynamics.

In joining the UW faculty, Kai is continuing his history of seeking international opportunities. Following his bachelors and masters level education at the University of Saarland, Kai continued his study of power system economics and dynamics at Brunel University in London. While there he worked in collaboration with the National Grid Company. Additional international experience resulted during his work with EDF when Kai went to the University of British Columbia as a visiting scholar for 8 months. His new colleagues sincerely hope that his wanderlust may now be diminished by a successful and satisfying career at the UW.