Nagamori AwardsAwards Ceremony

The Eighth Nagamori Awards Ceremony was Held Successfully

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Nagamori Foundation held the Eighth Nagamori Awards Ceremony on Sunday, September 4, 2022 to honor the winners of the awards and the recipients of the research grant for 2022.

Continuing from the last event, the ceremony was held at Miyako Hall of Nidec Corporation Annex Global Learning Center as the main venue, having the winners and the research grant recipients attending remotely and was streamed live via Web to approximately 200 people including many academics, and those related to Nagamori Foundation.

After the presentations by the six award winners followed by the review from the members of Nagamori Foundation’s Review Committee, Dr. Gianmario Pellegrino, Full Professor, Department of Energy "Galileo Ferraris", Politecnico di Torino was chosen as the Grand Nagamori Award winner.

The ceremony began with Prof. Hori, the Review Committee’s Chair, explaining how the winners were selected, followed by the announcement of the Eighth Grand Nagamori Award Winner. Each winner received a commendation certificate and a prize trophy from Mr. Nagamori, President of Nagamori Foundation, and then representing the award winners, Professor Pellegrino delivered a speech to express the pleasure of receiving the Award.

The next part of the ceremony was to present research grants (“Research Grant 2022”) to the 29 young researchers, mostly associate or assistant professors (10 new and 19 renewal recipients).

Dr. Kyohei Kiyota, Associate Professor of Tokyo Institute of Technology, gave a speech to appreciate the grant on behalf of all the grant recipients.

Mr. YANAGI Takashi, Vice Minister of Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology – Japan, appeared remotely and gave a congratulatory address. The ceremony ended in great success.

The Grand Nagamori Award (2022)

Gianmario Pellegrino
[Full Professor, Department of Energy "Galileo Ferraris", Politecnico di Torino]
Synchronous and PM-synchronous reluctance motor drives - theory, design, and control methods

Award Winners (2022)

Huijun Gao
[Professor and Director, Research Institute of Intelligent Control and Systems, Harbin Institute of Technology]
For contributions to the advanced control for mechatronic systems
Yunwei Ryan Li
[Professor and Acting Department Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta]
For contribution to the PWM, control and converter topology of medium voltage high power industrial drives
Burak Ozpineci 
[Section Head, Vehicle and Mobility Systems Research Section, Building and Transportation Science Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory]
Low cost, high efficiency, compact electric motor drives for more electrified transportation systems
Maryam Saeedifard
[Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology]
For contributions to highly-efficient, power-dense and fault-tolerant multilevel converter-based medium-voltage drives
Akio Yamamoto
[Professor, Department of Human and Engineered Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo]
Pioneering research and development on theoretical models and applied systems for electrostatic film actuators

The Grand Nagamori Award winner's comment


Dr. Gianmario Pellegrino
(Full Professor, Department of Energy "Galileo Ferraris", Politecnico di Torino)

I am blessed and humbled to receive the Eighth Grand Nagamori award, one of the utmost recognitions dedicated to electric motors and drives contributors and surely a milestone in my career.

My admiration and deep gratitude go to Mr. Nagamori, founder of NIDEC and President of the Nagamori Foundation, for advocating technical excellence in research and innovation throughout his career and for promoting this award. Warm thanks to the honorable colleagues of the Review Committee, for deeming my work highly valuable. Thanks to my wife Raffaella, and to all my beloved family at large. This recognition is shared with my “other family”, the colleagues, students and collaborators at Politecnico di Torino: we once again showed we can do great things!

Regarding my studies, electric motor drives have been considered a mature technology for too long, and are still overlooked by users and investors despite their central role into decarbonization of energy production, emission-free transportation, and efficient use of energy. Our research efforts contributed to electric motors with minimized amount of permanent magnets, and to new control strategies such as the direct flux vector control and the plug-and-play sensorless control. Moreover, we pursued and promoted openness in research by means of open-access design and learning resources to make new technologies such as Synchronous Reluctance motor drives available to a wider community of engineers. I dream of such dissemination having a visible impact on the society, and helping attracting talents to engineering and to electric power conversion in particular.

The Grand Nagamori Award recognition is a spark to renovate my highest ambition and urgent sense of responsibility for the years to come, which will see the transition towards a more electrified and sustainable future.