Virginia Tech engineering pioneer named NAI Fellow
Fred C. Lee has been named a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow for 2018. Lee is the third NAI Fellow from Virginia Tech since its inception. He joins X.J. Meng, a University Distinguished Professor of Molecular Virology, and President Tim Sands as NAI Fellows at Virginia Tech.
Lee retired in September 2017 from Virginia Tech after 40 years. He was named a University Distinguished Professor in 1998 and founded the Center for Power Electronics Systems, a preeminent academic center in power electronics research at Virginia Tech. Lee received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan in 1968, and his master's degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Duke University in 1972 and 1974, respectively.
After 40 years at the university, Lee, who is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, has made immeasurable contributions to the field of power electronics. These include:
- Earning more than $100 million in research funding
- Supervising 84 Ph.D. students and 93 master’s students to completion
- Filing 104 patents (82 of which so far have been awarded, with the rest pending)
- Becoming one of the top three most-cited engineering authors out of over 1 million, according to the Microsoft H index
- Publishing more than 290 journal papers and 710 referred conference papers.
Lee will be formally inducted as a Fellow at the NAI's 7th Annual Conference in April in Washington, D.C.
