Sri-lankan electronics engineer (born 1954)
Nihal Kularatna is a Sri Lankan electronics engineer. He serves as professor at University of Waikato. He has over four and a half decades of contributions to both electronics research. In 2014 he was appointed the Vice Chair of the IEEE DC Energy Efficiency Committee. His research output includes over 160 refereed papers published in esteemed journals and presented at international conferences.
Education.
He holds a Doctor of Science (DSc) degree from the University of Waikato, and a Bachelor of Science in engineering (Honors) from the University of Ceylon.
Career.
During the period spanning 1985 to 2002, Kularatna joined the Arthur C Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies, he engaged in industrial research and spearheaded the development of continuous professional development training programs tailored for practicing engineers and also held the position of CEO within the organization.
In addition to his institutional roles, Kularatna served as a consultant for various US companies, including the Gartner Group and Technology Dynamics, NJ. In 2002, he moved to New Zealand, accepting a senior lecturer position at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Auckland. Subsequently, in 2006, he transitioned to the University of Waikato.
His research output includes over 160 refereed papers published in journals and presented at international conferences.
He was awarded with the UoW Postgraduate Research Supervision Excellence Award in 2021. He won the New Zealand Engineering Innovator of the year 2013.
Currently serving as an associate professor at the University of Waikato, School of Engineering Teaching and Research, Kularatna's research interests include electronic engineering, surge protection, power electronics, sensors and supercapacitors. He is a Contributing Editor (Book reviews) for IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine.
Contribution of books.
Nihal has shared his electronic engineering expertise by authoring many reference books for electronic engineers starting in 1996. His first work on electronic test and measuring instruments was published in 1996 by the Institution of Engineering Technology – London, which was formerly known as IEE-London. In 1998, he published a book with Elsevier titled Power Electronics Design Handbook: Low Power Components and Applications. This was followed by another work in 2000 for Elsevier titled Modern Component Families and Circuit Block Design. In 2003, a new edition of his first book was published as Digital and Analogue Instrumentation: Testing and Measurement. It was reprinted in 2008 by IET-London. His fifth work, co-authored, on telecommunications was published in 2004 by Artech House Publishers.
With CRC Press, he contributed two works in 2008 and 2012 respectively: Circuit Design and DC Power Management. From 2014 to 2021, he published three research monographs with Elsevier: on energy storage devices, transient surge protector design, and his latest monograph, Energy Storage Devices for Renewable Energy Systems: Rechargeable Batteries and Supercapacitors. These ten works collectively span over 4,000 printed pages.
References.
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