Christian-Albrechts-Universität Zu Kiel, Germany

Kiel University (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, CAU) is Germany’s northernmost fully-fledged university. With over 26,000 students and more than 2,000 scientists, it offers a cross-disciplinary academic environment. The University has eight faculties: Theology, Law, Business, Economics and Social Scieneces, Medicine, Arts and Humanities, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences, Engineering. The Faculty of Engineering is the youngest of these faculties. It was established in 1990 and combines the Institute of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Materials Science.
The disciplines offered by its eight faculties are connected by constant dynamic interfaces that are reflected in the university's teaching and integrative research profile.

When it was founded back in 1665, the CAU set itself the motto “Pax Optima Rerum: peace is the most valuable asset.” This maxim is as applicable today as it was over 350 years ago.
Kiel University’s mission is to do research and teaching that contribute towards peace, prosperity and maintaining a pluralistic, free society, and which addresses the challenges the world is facing. They are based on strong disciplines, they require interdisciplinary collaboration and they deal with transdisciplinary issues. At Kiel University solutions to today’s problems e.g. in health, environmental and cultural change, nutrition and energy are found and implemented together with stakeholders from society, industry and politics.

Over time, four dynamic priority research areas have systematically developed which are based on strong disciplines interacting together - Marine Science, Life Science, Societal and Cultural Change and Nano Surface & Interface Science. Today, the priority research areas are firmly embedded in the University’s structures. They complement the wide range of individual research in the various subjects and form the basis for the University’s Clusters of Excellence as well as the Graduate School “Human Development in Landscapes”.
The University’s Clusters “Precision Medicine in Chronic Inflammation” and “ROOTS - connectivity of society, environment and culture in past worlds” receive funding of around 100 million Euros from 2019 up to 2026. This makes Kiel University one of the 19 top German universities which have received two or more clusters.

The Chairs supporting E-PiCo are located at the Institute of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Kiel University. It stands for thorough, contemporary teaching and future-oriented cooperative research at the highest scientific level. In addition to a balanced mixture of theoretical and experimental basic research as well as application oriented research, the Institute strives to fulfil its founding mission of knowledge and technology transfer. The Institute is extensively integrated into cooperative and interdisciplinary research projects within as well as outside of the University.

The Chairs constituting Kiel’s core for the E-PiCo programme are the Chair of Automatic Control and the Chair of Power Electronics.
Research at the Chair of Automatic Control addresses modeling, analysis and control of complex dynamic systems and the development of novel solution approaches for industrial control tasks. This in particular includes model-based and data-driven control and observer (software sensors) design for nonlinear, interconnected and distributed parameter systems. The developed techniques are applied and evaluated in different application domains including production engineering, robotics, maritime systems, propulsion, and chemical engineering. In addition, the teaching activities cover state of the art concepts of automatic control and state estimation ranging from the fundamentals for linear systems to advanced methods for nonlinear and optimal control comprising also networked and interconnected as well as distributed parameter systems.
Research at the Chair of Power Electronics addresses multiple applications, including electric vehicle charging stations, (high speed) drives, grid-connected converters for renewable energy systems, Smart Transformers, data centers and aerospace systems. Within these applications, the group investigates hardware design, software design and system level interactions. This includes topics like wide bandgap power semiconductors, the design of highly integrated power converters, modular converter topologies, reliability analysis, controller design, stability analysis of power-based synchronization in power electronics dominated grids and more. The teaching portfolio is closely related to the state of the art research topics.