Matthias Preindlhas received the biannual Career Award from the FURTURA Foundation. The “Career Award for young South Tyroleans abroad" is granted every 2 years by the FUTURA foundation. It was founded in 1990 by the Hoteliers' Association (HGV) and the Athesia publishing house with support from the Südtiroler Sparkasse bank, the Despar, the Forst brewery, the Dolomiten newspaper, Südstern - the network for South Tyroleans abroad, and the European Academy of Bolzano (EURAC).
The FUTURA foundation has set itself the task of supporting young South Tyroleans financially and ideologically. The award is granted to people of age 35 and below with exceptional contributions to the fields of economics, science, or culture.
Matthias Preindl received the PhD degree in Energy Engineering from the Doctoral School of Industrial Engineering at University of Padua, Italy. He has earned several honors, including the NSF Career Award in early 2017. His primary research interests are the design and control of power electronic and motor drive systems with applications in electrified transportation systems, renewable-energy power plants, and smart grids.
Professor Preindl joined the department of Electrical Engineering in 2016 as an Assistant Professor. He is the founder and principal investigator of the Motor Drives and Power Electronics Laboratory (MPLab. Before joining Columbia University, Matthias was a Sessional Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the McMaster Institute for Automotive Research and Technology, both at McMaster University. He was a visiting scholar at University of California, Berkeley, a visiting student at Aalborg University, Denmark, and a trainee at the National Research Council (CNR) in Italy. M. Preindl worked in industry as a R&D engineer at Leitwind AG, Italy.
