Jan Vobecký

Biography:

Jan Vobecký is a Life Member of the IEEE. He was born in the Czech Republic and has been working more than 40 years at the Czech Technical Univeristy in Prague (CTU) and 18 years in the power semiconductor industry for ABB Switzerland, later Hitachi Energy. While working in Academia, he devoted his research to power semiconductor devices with emphasis on defect engineering, carrier lifetime control, and failure mechanisms of fast switches. In 2000, he became Full Professor in Electronics. In 2007, he joined the R&D department of ABB Semiconductors, Lenzburg, Switzerland. He is the author of 98 patents on design and technology for fast recovery diodes, thyristors, MOSFETs, and IGBTs. Beside this, he designed and qualified the latest generation thyristor portfolio of Hitachi Energy for High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines in the power range up to 12 GW, which are continuously being installed in the US, Canada, Middle East, India, and China.

Jan has been working as a professor in the Microelectronics Department at the CTU in Prague since 1980s and Senior Principle R&D Engineer of ABB and Hitachi Energy since 2007. From 2002 to 2006 he served as President and Vice-President of the CS Section IEEE Region 8. From 2006 to 2019, he was member of AdCom IEEE Electron Devices Society. From 2014 to 2017 he was member of the IEEE EDS Power Devices and ICs Committee. From 2019 to 2021 he served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Electron Device Letters. In 2024 he was inducted to the Hall of Fame of the ISPSD, the premier global forum for technical discussions and innovation in power semiconductor technology. He is cited for pushing the limits of diodes and thyristors by carrier lifetime engineering.