Matthias Preindl received the PhD degree in Energy Engineering from the Doctoral School of Industrial Engineering at University of Padua, Italy (2014), the MSc degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from ETH Zurich, Switzerland (2010), and the BSc degree in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) form University of Padua, Italy (2008).

M. Preindl joined Columbia University in the City of New York, USA in 2016, where he is an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering. He is the founder and principal investigator of the Motor Drives and Power Electronics Laboratory (MPLab) and a founding member of the Columbia Electrochemical Energy Center (CEEC).

Before joining Columbia University, M. Preindl was a Sessional Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (2015) and a Post Doctoral Research Associate at the McMaster Institute for Automotive Research and Technology (2014-2015), both at McMaster University, Canada. He was a visiting scholar at University of California, Berkeley, USA (2013), a visiting student at Aalborg University, Denmark (2009), and a trainee at the National Research Council (CNR), Italy (2008). M. Preindl worked in industry as a R&D engineer at Leitwind AG, Italy (2010-2012).

He obtained several honors including the NSF Career Award (2017), the FUTURA Award of the Futura Foundation (2016), a honorable mention at the Masao Horiba Awards (2019), best paper and presentation awards at IEEE conferences, merit-based fellow and scholarships, and a price for outstanding achievements during his studies. His primary research interests are the design and control of power electronic systems with specific focus on energy storage and motor drive systems for electrified transportation, renewable-energy, and smart grid applications.