Professor Tariq Muneer, PhD, DSc, CEng, FICIBSE
Over the last 33 years Professor Tariq Muneer has led the developments related to research and teaching of Energy Engineering with a great deal of imagination, vigour and sincerity. The following are a few examples of his personal interest that has led to hardware and software developments that have directly been used in undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral teaching and research: (i) installation of a (£155k) 16kWp photovoltaic façade, (ii) erection of hydrogen laboratory with electrolyser, six cylinders containing compressed hydrogen and fuel-cell, (iii) three roof-mounted wind turbines, and (iv) four electric vehicle charging facilities that facilitate drivers at all of the Edinburgh Napier University campuses. He has also led the development of many undergraduate and postgraduate modules and programmes related to Mechanical- and Energy Engineering.
Externally, Professor Muneer has provided advice and shared expert knowledge to organisations such as ECOSSE (Scottish Government’s project related to e-vehicle), the City of Edinburgh and other research charities such as SISER, Beltane, Royal Geographic Society, Agder Univeristy (Norway), Granada University (Spain) and University of Maribor (Slovenia). Professor Muneer is involved in a large number of academic and literary activities that include development of innovative teaching, personal research, PhD supervision with 38 completions, delivering keynote speeches, collaboration with a large number of other UK and international universities and helping local schools via visits and talks. He is also a prolific writer with 14 books/chapters in books and over 285 articles.
Professor Mohammad Abusara, Associate Professor at the University of Exeter and Managing Director of HiT Power Ltd
Professor Abusara received his BEng degree from Birzeit University, Palestine, in 2000 and his PhD degree from the University of Southampton in 2004, both in Electrical Engineering. His PhD was concerned with control of grid-connected inverters and was sponsored by Bowman Power Group Ltd in Southampton. He worked for Bowman Power until 2010 during which he led the development of a number of commercial products including a novel interleaved grid-connected inverter, line interactive uninterruptable power supply, AC microgrids, converters for hybrid vehicles and sensorless drives for high-speed machines. He joined the University of Exeter in 2010 leading the microgrids research activity and acting as Director of Post Graduate Research in the Engineering department. To date he has obtained research grant income of c. £2.1m from Research Councils and industry, and published over 100 papers and a monograph, supervised 12 PhD students to completion and currently supervising 7 PhD students. In 2014 he founded HiT Power Ltd (HPL) to commercialise his work in Power Electronics. HPL has developed a cost effective, efficient and reliable 100kW converter for battery to grid applications. A number of those converters are currently installed at the Royal Mint, Portsmouth International Port and industrial estates in South Wales